Well, as I said earlier, we're going to look at a part of the Lord's Prayer, a petition about forgiveness. So you can take out your Bibles then and turn to Matthew 6 again. I'm going to be referring to Matthew 18, where Jesus tells that parable about the steward who owed the king much, and he forgave him his debt and so on. So I'll reference Matthew 18 in the sermon. But for now, we're just gonna read Matthew 6, verse 12, And then we'll also look at 14 and 15 of chapter 6. So, Matthew 6, verse 12, and then we'll look at verse 13, Lord willing, next week. I'm gonna skip it for tonight, I know it's there, but we're just gonna go from 12 to 14 and 15. So this is God's word, and let's pray for His blessing upon it tonight. Great God, here we are again with your word open before us, and as every time we read your word, Lord, we pray for insight and for wisdom. We pray that your Holy Spirit would illumine our hearts to understand, believe, and do what your word teaches. We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. So Matthew 6, verses 12 and then 14 and 15, God's word. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 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 is God's word. So we all know this petition. I don't think I need to give a long introduction tonight. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We all probably know that, we've memorized it, we've probably prayed it hundreds of times. It's an awesome petition. And like the other ones in the Lord's Prayer, it's short, but it's very deep. I mean, you could do a Bible study, a several-week Bible study on this petition. Forgive us our debts. It's full of meaning. It's rich and profound. And so today as we look at it, of course, you can't do it all in one sermon like I say so often, but we're going to look through this petition in the Lord's Prayer and talk about debts, our debts. We're going to talk about God forgiving us. And we're going to talk about us forgiving others. You can kind of see already where we get that all from this text. So let's just get right started with it tonight. So Jesus is teaching us when we pray, talking to Christians, he says, among those other things in the Lord's Prayer, he says we should pray that God would forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now the question is, what are debts? That's not a trick question. You know, typically when Jesus teaches his disciples something clear, he's not trying to be sneaky or tricky. A debt is something that you owe someone. And we know even in real life what a debt is. If your friend sold you her car for a really good deal, maybe just like 500 bucks, she would say something like, you know, a couple weeks later, if she saw you, she'd say, hey, you still owe me that 500 bucks. You know, you're in debt to me. She could kind of make a little joke of it. And we would understand what that means. We would owe her the money for the car. And that's how Jesus is using the term, not for money, but with reference to sin and spiritual life. And I noted Matthew 18, there's that parable. Again, I didn't read it, probably you've read it before, but read Matthew 18, where Jesus teaches that parable about the servant who was in debt to his master, like millions of dollars. And Jesus uses that parable to say, that's how we're in debt before God, because of our sin. And so this is just common Jewish thinking in the first century that our sins were referred to as debts before God. It's not like a perfect one-to-one analogy, but we kind of get it. If we disobey God's law, we're digging ourselves into a hole of debt. It's called debt when we sin. And so that's why the Westminster larger catechism says, we read the shorter one, but the larger one says, when we sin, we become debtors to the justice of God. This is just how we speak. Sin is like a debt to God. Now again, if you read the Matthew 18 parable, the man who is in debt to the master owed him tons and tons of money, like something he couldn't even pay off. And it's similar for us. We've sinned so much. Like that servant in Jesus' parable, there's no way for us to get out of the debt of sin. It's just too big. And we keep adding to it. There's nothing we can do to remove it or make it lower or lesser. So, just imagine for a while, maybe you've thought about your sins before, and what it would be like if you actually, if somebody could somehow record all of the sins that you've ever committed. You know, the ones that you speak, maybe all the terrible things you've said, and all the terrible thoughts that came into your head, and all those bad deeds that you did. Let's just pretend, you know, somebody could write them down in a huge journal. Well, it would take volumes of journals, wouldn't it? It wouldn't just be a few pages of a short journal. If someone would write down all my sins, or all your sins, it would be a stack of journals full of sins. All the angry things we've said, curse words, and angry meltdowns. Bad and dirty thoughts, thoughts about murdering someone, or sleeping with someone, or dreadful things you did to other people, maybe in high school, or just a few months ago. So let's just pretend all of your sins were written in that stack of books. Now imagine if you had to start reading through it. I think it would make you sick to your stomach and just be overwhelming. We couldn't handle it if we started reading through the books of all of the sins that we've committed even when we were young. It would probably drive us into despair. And if you think about it too, then we can't repay that debt of sin. We have this huge stack of journals that's full of our sins, and there's nothing we can do that would erase those sins out of the journals and clear them up. No matter what we say, no matter how hard we try, we can't get rid of those sins in those journals. And so as the story goes, and if you read Matthew 18 and other parts of the Bible, of course, the only thing we can hope for when we think about the stack of journals with our sins in is for someone to erase the debts or cancel them. Like in the parable, the king forgave the debt of the servant. That's our only hope. And that's what Jesus is talking about in this petition of the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts. Forgive us our debts. It's another way to say, as you know, forgive us our sins. There's different ways to talk about sin in the Bible or forgiveness, like wash away our iniquities, blot out our transgressions, or forgive our debts. It all means a similar thing. And so Jesus is teaching us in this prayer to always ask our Heavenly Father for forgiveness. Because we sin, you know, daily, we stumble, and we always need to ask God for forgiveness. And so when Jesus teaches us to pray forgiveness, for forgiveness to our Father, there's wonderful things, wonderful truths that this means. The first thing that you think about is God forgives sins. Jesus wouldn't tell you to ask your Heavenly Father to forgive you if it was an impossibility. And so right away we're reminded from the whole Bible that our Father in heaven forgives sins. We sang it in Psalm 130, with you there is forgiveness, Lord, that you may be feared. And so that's, you know, one thing that we can think. The reality is that that big stack of your sins written in that journal, all the sins there, it's possible to have them erased. God forgives. God cancels debts. He blots out our transgressions. And as we know, this is what God is like. He's kind and forgiving. He not only gives us our daily bread out of his mercy, but he also forgives us our sins. And that's that Old Testament refrain over and over. It says, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He forgives all our iniquities, it teaches. Now, you know, we know this. I know this is just basic truth. Yes, of course, God forgives sins. We've prayed this. We believe this as Christians. But a lot of people today think that God, you know, is kind of like mean and cruel, maybe a chauvinist. He's not those things. But God is just and he does deal with sin in an evil and righteous way. But God is also merciful. He abundantly forgives sinful people. And so we're reminded of that every time we pray the Lord's Prayer. God forgives sins. And another reality is, this is great, we only have to ask for forgiveness. You know, Jesus didn't say, you know, think about that your debts, you know, before God, think about your sins and pray that God would give you enough energy to work hard to pay off the debt of sin. You know, Father, give me energy so I can start making amends for all these sins I've committed. That's not what Jesus taught. He just said, pray for forgiveness, forgive our debts. And again, we know this truth, 1 John, we read this or hear it all the time. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins. We confess, we ask forgiveness, and we receive forgiveness. You just have to ask, and even kids can understand this. You don't have to do a whole bunch of things to get forgiveness from God. You just have to ask God, please forgive me, forgive us our debts. And another truth here, so God forgives sins, we just have to ask, but another truth here, and this is from the whole scripture, is that this forgiveness comes through Christ. That's not here in the Lord's Prayer, I realize, but if you think of the whole Bible's picture, God is a forgiving God, and he forgives people because of Jesus' work and through Jesus' work as he died on the cross. So it's a mystery to think that the one who taught us to ask our Father for forgiveness is the one the Father sent to die on the cross to secure our forgiveness. The one who's teaching us about, to ask our Father forgiveness, he's the one who died on the cross to secure our forgiveness. There's a great mystery here. Like Ephesians 1 teaches, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins. So that's why the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, when we ask God to forgive us, we pray that God, for Christ's sake, would freely pardon all our sins. So God forgives our sins, we just have to ask, and he forgives our sins through Christ's death and blood on the cross. And so all this to say is forgiveness then is a gracious act of God. We deserve, again, the Matthew 18 story, that servant who was so deeply in debt to God, or to the king, he deserved to be put in prison for his debt, because it was so bad. But the king forgave his debt. And the same is for us. It would be 100% fair, if you know all the stack, the journals of our sins, it would be 100% fair if we were condemned for all our sins. That's what we rightly deserve. But God is gracious and merciful, and he takes care of our debt by giving his son to pay for it in his death on the cross. It's gracious. And again, I kind of already mentioned this, but this is so good for us to remember that God graciously forgives sins. Because we all have maybe sometimes a little legalist in us, or maybe a little Pope in us, and sometimes we think we have to do things to get forgiveness. Have you ever had that where you messed up big time, you sinned, and now in your head you think, well, I got to do this and this and this so God is happy with me again, and so maybe I can, you know, move this forgiving attitude of God. But that's a wrong way to think. We're forgiven by grace and mercy, full and free and finally in Christ. And so as we think about this petition, forgive us our debts. Isn't that a great one? And one more note before we go into the second half of the petition. If you want to live a truly happy, truly peaceful and pleasant and meaningful life with true hope, The main thing that you need, one of the main things that you need is the forgiveness of sins. I don't know if you can think about what would it be to go through your whole life without ever knowing what it means to have all of your sins forgiven. Those of you who have experience and know what it means to have all your sins forgiven would think, man, that'd be terrible. How could you even live if you didn't know your sins were forgiven? How could you even sleep comfortably at night? And that's true, it's impossible to have true peace and joy and hope without the forgiveness of sins. Because like the Bible teaches, sin is like a barrier or a wall between us and God. Isaiah 59 says, your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God. So sin separates us from God. And the only way to true peace with God is to have that wall of separation removed. by the forgiveness of your sins through Jesus. And so praise God for this truth, that God does forgive sins. You just have to ask. It comes through faith in Christ, and it's by grace. Okay, so that's the first half. Again, basic Christian truths that I think many of you understand. Good stuff. But there's the second half of the petition. Forgive us our debts. We get that. As we have also forgiven our debtors. Now, let's first think about this debtor language. Do you know what that means? It's kind of the same language as in the first part of the petition. Of course, we're debtors to God because we sin against him. But people who sin against us are debtors to us. Or if we sin against someone else, we're debtors to them. So this language also goes from person to person. Now we do know that ultimately, all sin is against God. David says, against you, Lord, and you alone have I sinned. But the Bible does for sure teach that people do sin against each other as well. And there are several examples in the Bible. In 1 Samuel 19, remember the whole drama between David and Saul and Jonathan? King Saul wanted to kill David, and Jonathan found out about it, and Jonathan told his dad, King Saul, he said, don't sin against David, because David had not sinned against you, because he knew Saul wanted to kill him. So David says, don't sin against him. He realizes you can sin against people. And actually, I already referenced Matthew 18 a few times, but remember that famous statement of Peter where he says, if someone sins against me, how often should I forgive him? So Peter's talking about someone sinning against me or us sinning against someone else. So I think we get this. There are debts that we have to each other when we sin against each other. And we all, I mean, this is tough, but we all know this from experience, right? People have lied to you and it maybe still affects you and it hurts you. Or maybe you've had it where you know someone genuinely hates you and wishes you were dead. Or somebody maybe sinned against you by ripping you off on a car that you bought or a laptop you got online or something. And you can give more examples. You know what it means to be sinned against. And so another way to think about this prayer, this last part of the prayer, it's forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. As we forgive those who sin against us. And we're gonna get into it a little bit more, but just remember, you know, Jesus is teaching Christians here, and so sometimes, you know, Christians sin against other Christians because we're not perfect. Even in, you know, in our church family, I'm sure we've had situations where someone sinned against someone else, and this prayer reminds us that it's a church thing to forgive each other. It's gonna happen in any relationship where there's sin, someone sins against someone else, and Jesus is teaching us to forgive. But there's still, it sometimes is difficult if you look at this and if you read over this slowly, forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. That word as is important. It's not exactly in a one-to-one way, but the word as there means an analogous way or a similar way or like a comparison. In John 15, Jesus said something similar. He said, love each other as I have loved you. Jesus is saying, let your love for each other reflect my love for you. There's an analogy there. But it's not exactly the same. When Jesus taught us to love each other as he loves us, we can't love each other in a redeeming way. We can't love each other with a perfectly steadfast eternal love like Jesus does. But by God's grace and with his help, we can truly love each other in a way that's like Christ's love for us, in an analogous way. And so the same thing goes for forgiveness. We can't forgive each other in a redeeming way with this perfect forgiveness like the Lord forgives us. but we can truly forgive each other by God's grace in a way something similar to God forgiving us. And so that's why the shorter catechism says, by his grace, we're enabled from the heart to forgive others. It's real forgiveness. It's not exactly the same as God's because he's God and we're people, but there's an analogy. And we know that it for sure happens that Christians forgive others, that you who are followers of Jesus have truly forgiven others from the heart. Now again, not with a perfect and redeeming forgiveness, but you all who follow Jesus have forgiven other people, and you've truly done it. I've heard some of your stories where you've prayed and wrestled with it, and you've truly forgiven someone who wronged you. I know it's not always quick and easy to forgive someone, but I know that you from the heart have truly forgiven other people. So you know from experience what it means to forgive your debtors. And so again, you have to think about this. When you think about this connection between forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, remember Jesus is not talking to a big random crowd of a mixed crowd where some are Christians or believers and some are not, but he's talking to his disciples. He's talking to people, you know, God has changed your heart. God has given you faith and repentance, the Holy Spirit's at work in you, and so you're unable to forgive. And when you pray, you're praying that the cause of your forgiveness would show up in an effect of forgiveness. So what I mean by that is the cause of your forgiveness is God's love in giving Christ. And the effect of your being forgiven by God through Christ, the effect of that is that you're actually enabled to forgive. So there's a cause and effect, and these two Jesus is putting together. Another angle, you can think in terms of evidence. So there's cause and effect. You know, when God changes your heart and forgives you and gives you, you know, his Holy Spirit, the effect is that you will actually forgive others. So there's a tight tie to the two. But also think of evidence. Thomas Watson, the Puritan, said to forgive, you know, true forgive, truly forgive, to truly forgive is one of the highest evidences of grace in a person's heart. Right? One of the highest evidences of grace in someone's heart is when they truly forgive. And so that's, again, kind of what this prayer Jesus is teaching us is getting at. When we forgive our debtors, truly, that's evidence that we have grace working in our heart. And then we can ask God to forgive us our debts when we continue to stumble. Someone said it right. A forgiven person will be a forgiving person. It's kind of like, another way to say this is those who have true faith, James says, will truly show it in works. And the same thing, those who have truly been forgiven by God will show it by forgiving others. There's this connection. And so Thomas Watson again said, we don't need to climb into heaven to see whether our sin's forgiven. You know, you don't need a ladder to go into heaven to see if your sins are forgiven. Let us look into our hearts and see if we can forgive others. If we can, no doubt God has forgiven us. So you see that analogy between God forgiving us and us forgiving others? And this makes sense. Let's say you refuse to forgive someone. Let's say there's someone in your life, a friend or a family member who you refuse to forgive. They did something wrong and you will not forgive them and you will not make amends. Don't you think it would be hypocritical, then, for you to turn and ask God to forgive you? Are there people in your life who you refuse to forgive? It's hard, then, and hypocritical to turn to God and say, will you forgive me, Lord? That's what Jesus is teaching us, that we need to forgive from the heart as evidence of his grace at work. Or as someone else said, forgiveness not shown is forgiveness not known. So if that's you, I mean, if you're struggling to truly forgive someone, you need to pray for a soft heart. You need to pray and beg God to enable you to forgive others, so you can more and more experience what true forgiveness for you means. All right, well, there's one more point of application here to make. Well, kind of a multi-layered point of application. Remember last week, shifting gears here a little bit, remember last week, Sunday night, I was talking about how the Lord's Prayer, when Jesus in his awesome wisdom taught us the Lord's Prayer, it forms us when we actually pray it. Prayer is a means of grace that forms us when we pray. God can use our prayers to change us, in other words. We can apply that to this petition. In Jesus' perfect wisdom, again, he's teaching us with perfect wisdom, and he is connecting our being forgiven by God and our forgiving others. He's connecting them. So that, when Jesus teaches us this prayer, and when we pray this, it will form us to keep God's forgiveness and our forgiving others connected, where we don't separate them. Not that we earn forgiveness, but we know that where truly one is, the other will truly be. And so again, when we pray this, we're basically asking God to help us forgive as we've been forgiven. In Colossians 3 is what we're praying, where Paul says, forgive one another, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also do. When we pray this, that's being formed in us. As the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also do. And that's a formation that we need. Sometimes it's not too hard to forgive someone, right? If you have a good friend or someone you really love and they do something to you, maybe they just are upset and they snap at you and call you a bad name or something, and they're right away, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I apologize. And you're saying, it's okay, I forgive you, and you really do, and it's not that hard. It's good forgiveness, but it's not so difficult. But as many of you know, sometimes forgiveness is really hard. And that's why we need to have this formation of forgiveness in us through the prayer. Sometimes people wrong us and what's our gut instinct sometime is revenge or to get even and retaliation. Maybe some of you have been seriously stabbed in the back by friends or family members or someone you love. Maybe some of you have been manipulated and used by someone else and it hurt you and it made you angry and shook you up. It's not easy to forgive all the time. And sometimes Christians, we know this, sometimes Christians have to face verbal abuse and physical abuse. It's so evil, it's hard even to think about. Oh, it's not easy to forgive all the time. And we need this formation of forgiveness when we pray. And forgiveness takes time. This kind of hard forgiveness sometimes takes time. And prayer and patience and tears and much grace to give out forgiveness to someone who really hurt you and wronged you. And so, by the way, I was thinking about this forgiveness. You know, there are people in your life, possibly some Christian's life, who have really hurt you, and they're not very good people, and you're a little bit apprehensive even to be around them. When Jesus teaches us to forgive others, and when the Bible teaches us that, it doesn't mean we have to trust them, or hang out with them, or always be around them. That's not what the Bible teaches. You wouldn't want to do that if the person who hurt you was still mean and manipulative. But you can still forgive, even if you don't necessarily trust and even if you have to escape some space. The key is forgiveness. And I think another way that this prayer forms us and helps us forgive, when it connects God's forgiveness to our forgiving others, is when you think about it, and I already mentioned this, think of how much the Lord has forgiven you for a million wrongs, innumerable debts, sins almost without number. And so when someone else sins against you, you have to make the connection, wait, the Lord has forgiven me for millions of sins. I can certainly forgive this person for those two terrible things he did against me. That's the formation here. If you truly understand how sinful you are, and how amazing God's gracious forgiveness is, and slowly our hearts soften and gives us more ability to forgive, even those who have wronged us terribly. Two short stories or examples before we end. I think some of you maybe know who Booker T. Washington is. He was a slave in the 19th century, and of course, he was treated terribly and brutally. Booker T. saw so much evil and so much hatred and so much wickedness, it would make you cry to read it. And after President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, he was free. He was no longer a slave. And he wrote a book about it called Up From Slavery, which is a great read. But it's so fascinating. When you read Booker T. Washington's book, he doesn't hold any bitterness or anger and he doesn't have a fighting spirit to those who wronged him so terribly. And he said he learned that it takes a great man to love and to forgive. What a great testimony of the Christian faith and true forgiveness. Another story, another example of this kind of forgiveness or a teaching of it is maybe a lesser-known figure is this Protestant theologian Miroslav Volf. He grew up in Serbia during the Cold War. And his dad actually was tortured in a concentration camp, and Wolf, in his own experience, saw a lot of strife and conflict in the Yugoslav wars. And he was interrogated, and he went through some pretty tough times, too. And he saw a lot of evil in that Cold War context. And he, as a Christian, was wrestling with forgiveness, as he saw evil and violence right before him. And this is what Wolf says is also applicable for us today. Wolf was talking about the evil and the violence and the hatred, and Wolf, when he was seeing it, he understood as a Christian that hatred and revenge are a vicious cycle and a downward spiral. So there's hatred, and then someone wants revenge, and then there's evil. And then there's more hatred and more revenge and more evil, and it's a downward spiral. That's what Wolf saw, and it's true of our culture. But he nailed it. Wolf nailed it by saying that the only thing, you know, that the only thing that can break that vicious cycle is forgiveness, is forgiveness. And this is what Wolf said, only those who are forgiven and who are willing to forgive will be capable of relentlessly pursuing justice without falling into the temptation to pervert it into injustice. Brilliant. Only those who are forgiven and who are willing to forgive will be capable of relentlessly pursuing justice without falling into the temptation to pervert it into injustice. That's what we need to remember today as well. And that's where this prayer comes in. Teach us, Lord, to forgive. Forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors. It's quite profound. Such short phrases, but in the divine wisdom of Jesus, it's very profound when we pray this. It has to do with that awesome Christian truth of the forgiveness of sins that we enjoy through Christ by grace. And it's a prayer of formation that God would help us reflect that forgiveness to the world around us. And that then is a great testimony to the gospel. Let's pray.