It's a figure of speech here. Prayer, as we ought to know by now, is important. It is so important that Christ our Lord gives us a model prayer, or a template, as we would say today, a pattern to follow in our ideal prayers. And the Shorter Catechism covers this prayer, breaking the petitions into six parts. The first part of the first petition is to pray for God's glory. The second petition is to pray that God's kingdom would grow. The third petition is that God's will would be done. You see the pattern so far, it's all about God. The fourth petition is for our daily provisions, and we covered all that entailed. And now in the fifth petition, the prayer is for forgiveness. This sermon is about the fifth petition and how important it is in our lives to go before God and pray for forgiveness and what that looks like. Now I get this from the Shorter Catechism 105, as well as collecting a little more from the Larger Catechism on the Lord's Prayer as well, which has a lot more detail than I'm going to cover in this first part. So you see in your outline you have two parts, two points. The first point is this sermon. The second point is the next sermon. Here, ask God to forgive our debts. Shorter Catechism question 105. What do we pray for in the fifth petition? In the fifth petition, which is, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, we pray that God, for Christ's sake, would freely pardon all our sins, which we are the rather encouraged to ask, because by His grace we are enabled from the heart to forgive others. Now, You would think that this was natural. You would think that Christians everywhere would ask God for the forgiveness of their sins. Isn't that intuitive? But unfortunately, it's not always the case. We are still sinners, although saved by grace. And so some Christians are so confused, they don't think they sin. I met a Christian like that once. When I first met him, he tried to explain to me the Christian tradition he followed, the Wesleyan tradition, and how he had not sinned in a long time. And I just, my jaw dropped and I just stared at him. What? What is this? And he mentioned this sermon that Wesley wrote, and I should read it and try to get a better, I read it and I'm walked away even more confused. The Bible is so clear. It's crystal clear. Christians sin after they are saved. And so, Christ knowing how easily deceived we can be as Christians. believes, we need to hear this, that we need to ask God for forgiveness because we do sin. Other Christians have a low view of sin, and so they're not quick to repent. Not much of a big deal, I'll get to it eventually, or they quickly forget about it because sin is not so serious to them. Again, a false belief or perhaps just an excuse for their pet sin is not always clear to me. It's not really relevant as the pastor to know everyone's motivation, but rather to point them in the right direction, right? Other Christians, we just forget. We have a busy life. We did get caught in a sin, perhaps, a burst of anger towards our children or our spouse when we should not have been. It becomes a habit. We don't think about it. We're perhaps corrected. And in the midst of the correction, we get a phone call and forget. We just forget. And again, Christ is telling us here in this model prayer, this is something you should not forget. You need to go before your Father and ask for forgiveness of any and each and all sins. It's important for Christians to do it. Those are good reasons, and the greatest reason to do it is simply because Christ tells us to. And forgiveness is needful, then. It's implied here and explained elsewhere in the Word of God that we need to ask for forgiveness. It's a necessity in the Christian life. We cannot satisfy the debt of sin before salvation nor after salvation. The debt is what we owe God. We owe Him perfection and thought, word, and deed. That's the figure of speech there. We know elsewhere in Luke where the Lord's Prayer is mentioned again, where it's called a sin. Forgiveness, they are sins. Here it's debts. Before salvation, of course we need to hear it all the time, that is, those who are not saved, that they need to go before God and ask for forgiveness. And we should teach others and our children and each other that they cannot do enough good works to pay off the debt they owe to God. These things are true. And the only solution is to flee sin and to cry out for mercy. That is asking for forgiveness. That He would blot out and wipe away all our sins and not hold it to our account and send us to hell. After salvation, being a Christian does not mean we no longer ask for forgiveness. We see Psalm 130, the Catechism uses that. Why would it use a psalm as evidence? Because the Psalms, most of them are written by David. Who is David? But a believer! I mean, he's already saved, and yet here he is asking God for forgiveness, giving us model examples of prayer in the Old Testament. "'If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities,' he says in Psalm 130, verse 3 and following. "'If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?' "'But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.' You can only go to God, you must only go to God, because when he holds it against you, there's nowhere else you can go. That's what he's saying. If he marks iniquities, if he's keeping track, and he does, then you better go to him and ask for forgiveness. It's needful. It's needful in the Christian life. A Christian who does not seek forgiveness is a Christian who will not be forgiven. But, Pastor, aren't we Calvinists? Yes, we are. Yes we are, and we follow the Word of God, and the Word of God tells us this. If you don't forgive your brother, Christ says, I won't forgive you for your father. If you don't confess me, I won't confess you. What's going on here? What he's saying is if you really are saved, if I give this admonition, the fear of God will be stricken in you and you will change and you will eventually repent. You will confess Christ. You see, this is the means, right? The means the Spirit uses to move and motivate His people. Calvin is believing the means. We certainly believe in the means. That's why we believe in preaching. The Holy Spirit uses preaching and the Word of God. The Bible. We want to give the Bible to people. We don't believe God comes down from heaven and strikes the pagan in the middle of Africa and makes him a Christian. He could! But we're not called the secret things of God, but the revealed will, which is we're supposed to use the means. And the means in the Christian life is to ask for forgiveness, because Christ intercedes for us now in the heavenly places, and we need to draw daily from the well of his blood of grace and mercy for forgiveness. The death on the cross is applied as we go to him in humility, asking for forgiveness. We believe this. We teach the sinfulness of man, yes, before the fall, but even before salvation, but even after salvation. And because we believe it's so real and so seriously, we believe in redemption. So real and so serious. And important. It's important in the Christian life to ask for forgiveness. We go to the Father in that case, as our Father, no longer our judge. The difference between justification and sanctification. Another difference. You can hear it in the language. He's not our judge. He's not here to sit. He's already declared you innocent in Christ. The judgment is over. We have the eternal judgment and the future brought to us now. We declare it innocent. When He comes, He'll make it public, that which is now less public, our justification. On our sanctification, He's our Father. We're adopted. That's why the doctrine of adoption is important. It's not just justified, but also adopted and brought into the household of God, and we are His children and given the privileges and the rights of the sons and daughters of God. And one of those is access to the throne room and to ask for forgiveness. And He says, I will grant it. I will give it. I'm not a stingy God. I'm not a stingy Father. Acknowledgement And coming before your Father, asking for forgiveness of any sin that you have, is an example, an acknowledgement of your humility and your impotence, right? You don't have the power to wipe away your own sins, even after you're saved. And so you go to Him in prayer, and that's a humble act, it's a needful act. Oh Lord, if thou shouldest mark iniquities, who shall stand? Please do not mark it upon me, I pray, as your Son. Now, what is repentance again? That's implied here. He says, go to your father and ask for forgiveness. What is that but repenting? You're saying, this is wrong. Forgive me, God. Okay? So repentance is part of this process. There's contrition in your repentance. There's confession in your repentance. Contrition is godly sorrow for our sins or broken hearts. Confession is to those you sinned against, but particular and always against God, because the breaking of the second table is always a breaking of the first. God tells you not to break the second, and He's telling you from the first. Your violation of sin against your fellow man is a violation of sin against God. That's my point. He must always go to God, not just to each other. So you have contrition, you have confession, asking God for forgiveness of your sins must be done with a repentant heart and not a mercenary heart that unfortunately develops too easily in some religions such as Roman Catholic Church where it's just, hey, I just go in there and do my Hail Marys and talk to the priest and it's done. And they even in the past try to cover for future sins, indulgences. No, it must be with repentant heart. Anything less than that is hypocritical. Now let's look a little closer at this confession. You go before God, here He says, go to your Father and ask for forgiveness. For what? It's just kind of ask for forgiveness, kind of hanging out there. For sin, obviously. What kind of sins? Here we have the larger catechism giving us a little more detail. It's very helpful if you want to dig into that. For original sin and actual sin. Because what is sin? Transgression of the law of God, or want of conformity unto, that is, omission of the law of God. Period. John the Apostle describes it as without law. Sin is lawlessness, he says, or antinomian. Period. So it's none of this, well, I didn't mean to, You still sinned. I don't remember making the decision. Like original sin. Doesn't matter. It's still sin. It's still not conforming to God's law. That's what we don't get sometimes. We want to always reduce it to a volitional act of the will. It's not and cannot be reduced to that. It's simply not conforming to God's law. And that's what makes it so hard. People don't want to talk about those kind of sins and repent of those. It doesn't seem very fair in the American system. It's not. It's God's system. Romans 7 reminds us of original sin. It doesn't use the word original sin. There's different descriptions of it in the Bible, like there is for salvation, right? And in Romans 7, he describes it here about two or three different ways. In one way he says, "...for the good that I will to do I do not do, But the evil I will not to do, that I practice." Why? Because I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. That is, the members being the faculties of the soul and the body, I believe, all of that, who you are, because it tells you in Romans 6, take your members, who you are, and use them for God's glory. Your mind, your will, your emotions, your hands, your feet, your mouth, your ears, everything, right? God claims everything. And he describes another law or principle, we would say, in my members, warring against the law of my mind. I desire to do the right thing. That's the law of my mind. And here I am not doing it. I find another principle. I find the remnants of original sin, is what we say. We still have it. That's what a struggle is. That's what Romans 7 is. And if you read it, I think you'll recognize that's me. Not someone else, that's me. That's you. All Christians should look at 7 and say, oh, I get it. This makes sense. That is the struggle. And Galatians mentions it as well. As the flesh lusting against the spirit, and the spirit lusting against the flesh, or warring, or fighting, or clashing, they have different desires. The lust of the flesh are evil lusts. The lust of the spirit is righteous lust. They're righteous good things, righteous desires. Lust is always a bad word in English. Desires is a more neutral word. So, those sudden urges that perhaps come upon you, a different sin you never thought you had before, it's rare, walk around a corner and all of a sudden you blow up, that's from original sin. You didn't consciously think about, I think I'm gonna get angry today. You may be very mellow people, I've met people like that. They go through life, nothing seems to faze them, then one day, boom! Whoa, what happened? Desires well up within you that you didn't know you even had at times. Where does that come from? The law of the members that wish to sin, the flesh, the remnants of original sin. You see that now? It's not a volitional act. You're not like, I think I feel like wanting to sin today. It's there. That's the struggle that we had, the bad thought that pops into your mind that you never thought of before. That's from the sinful lust within all of us. We need to ask God for forgiveness. and ask for the death of the flesh. It's sin. You're supposed to ask for forgiveness for sins, even original sin. Or concupiscence is the fancy theological term. translation of the Greek word you see there in James, for instance, when lusts give birth to sin and then sin gives birth to death. He says, we are drawn to sin because of the lusts already in us, James says. Why? Because that lust wants sin. That's the point. Well, I haven't sinned yet. It doesn't matter. Your desire for it is bad enough. Even if you haven't enacted it yet. Even if you haven't even thought about it yet. Even if you didn't realize you had the desire there. Because that's just it. We are so ignorant of who we are. We're not omniscient with respect to all that we are. We are limited. I have blind spots. You have blind spots. And what's hiding in that blind spot is original sin. Only God knows your heart thoroughly. You don't know your heart thoroughly. And you find that out in Providence. Difficult times come upon you. That's why God gives us difficult times to remind you and to humble you. You will cry out, God, save me from this flesh, from the remnants of original sin. I don't want it. I don't like it. We need to pray for that. Does the church teach that? In my studies, as you know, I fear they don't. It's always just the volitional, conscious sins. When we have a proper anthropology, we understand the depth of sin, then we realize how much we really need to go before God and ask for forgiveness. The Old Testament talks about sins of ignorance. You remember those sacrifices? The sacrificial system teaches us the depth and the breadth and the height of sin, the different kinds of sins that teach Israel and us, because apparently we need to learn the lesson again today in the American churches. And ignorance is no excuse for violating God's law because sin is simply lawlessness, period. Actual sins, as you know, that's just the theological term, or we would say concrete sins, manifestations where you can see and touch them, is no more a sin than, or less a sin, or more a sin than original sin. It's still sin. It's all sin. Different connections of how they're related. Original sin is the root of actual sin, which is the fruit. Actual sin. Concrete violations of God's law and thought, word, and deed. This we know intuitively often. We see and feel. That's the sin we recognize more or less in our life every day. Thoughts that violate God's law. Words that hurt our neighbor and friends and family. Deeds that are wicked and violations, transgressions of His law. Both of omission and commission. That's what people typically think of. I'm going to go before my father. Forgive me, God, for this bad thought. Forgive me for these bad words. Forgive me for these bad actions. Forgive me for not doing the right thing when I could have and I should have. So I don't think I need to dwell on that. The next thing, interestingly enough, not mentioned in the larger catechisms. They can't describe everything. It's just there to help us dig into the Word of God. But we know it's there. It's a part of where we are. The world of sin. And this is what I mean by the world of sin. When we pay our taxes, does your money always go to righteous causes? Yeah. That's what I mean. And if you remember in Sunday School class, I covered this distinction called material cooperation with evil. That is, you give the material, the stuff, to accomplish evil, although formally your intent is not to accomplish evil. My intent is to honor the magistrate, as Christ tells us to, and Romans tells us to, very clearly, to pay taxes to whom taxes are due. And they were due to a wicked king at that time, kings who had orgies and worshipped false gods, etc., etc., with their tax money. And so we are stuck in an interlocking web of material cooperation with evil. Do you see it now? Forget taxes, all kinds of things. Going to the grocery store, getting gas. These people, unbelievers, and sinners do it too, Christians do it too. Take the money or the time and talent we work on a job and use it for some evil end. And you're like, I don't want to be part of this world anymore, this is terrible! And if your eyes become open in this, you can understand why some Christians wish to run off to the mountains. Right? This interlocking connection of one way or another we're contributing, not intentionally insofar as I wish I could do more evil with my money or my time or my opportunities, but just the fact that the whole world has fallen. That's why Christ must come with a fiery sword and purge it all! You see that? And our prayers, I believe, not only for original sin within us, not even for actual sins, but pray that God would help protect us from helping evil people any more than we have to. I don't want to give any more money than I have to, God, to a wicked government, to wicked policies and the like, to pray deliverance from such unintentional cooperation, in other words. to pray for minimal material support for such a world in which we live in. I think that's a proper prayer. It's not properly a prayer of forgiveness, so far as your intent isn't there, but you are materially doing it, and we're told, the Word of God tells us to be careful not to contribute towards evil. Here we are. What is forgiveness of sins? I haven't talked about that yet. We know we are supposed to go before God for forgiveness of sins. It's necessary. We know it involves repentance, which is contrition of the heart, which is confession with our mouth. What should we confess with our mouth when we're asking for forgiveness? For original sin that we still struggle with, the remnants of sin or the flesh of the old man, and actual sins, and to pray for deliverance from this evil world and all the interlocking connections of sin. But what is this forgiveness of sin? Twofold. Guilt is wiped away, and punishments. To pray that God would take the guilt away, which he does through Christ Jesus, the objective guilt of the act itself, because of what Christ does instead. And the subjective guilt of our own conscience that gets relief because we have sinned as children who know better in God's kingdom. And he says, I have forgiven you. If we only believe that God does remove our guilts, it's as simple as that. And coming before Him and saying, God, please forgive me. It doesn't have to be a long, drawn-out process. It doesn't always have to be accompanied with blubbering and tears, although that may be there. But it must be something that says, I was wrong, Lord, please take away the guilt of my sin. So take it to Him daily, because we daily sin. That's the guilt, that's the forgiveness of sins. I preached on that last week or the week before. As you recall, that God has forgotten our sins as far as the East is from the West. That's His forgiveness of our guilt. The punishment is slightly different, however. The punishment of hell, yes, I'm done away with. You don't have to face that. But you may face some punishment now. And so what you pray in those cases is that God would lessen the punishment, right? You want in a way sometimes, probably all the time, yes Lord, I don't want any punishment for the bad things I did as your child. Probably not going to happen often. Sometimes it's true, it does not happen. Sometimes bad things don't happen. But of course, what you're doing when you're praying for forgiveness, you're praying out of contrition of heart, and you accept whatever punishment God gives you. So there will be, and there could be, a lessening of it, but it's God's prerogative, and you must submit to that. But it's not wrong to pray for a lesser punishment. David does it. Other saints do it. You may get it. Now, this is the Lord's Prayer. We're supposed to come before Him. We're supposed to ask for forgiveness as needful. Forgiveness implies that you're repentant. You have a contrite heart. You're confessing before Him your sins. We know the sins we should confess before Him. And that the forgiveness that we seek is a forgiveness of our guilts, both objective and subjective, and the lessening of our punishment. And these things should be accompanied with, and ought to bring forth the fruit when we ask for forgiveness, peace, joy, and assurance. Peace, joy, and assurance. Not mentioned here, to be sure, because this prayer doesn't say a lot of things. It's very concise, isn't it? But we know from the rest of the Word of God, there's a lot more involved. Assurance of salvation comes in many ways to the people of God, but it begins and continues with forgiveness. And obtaining that forgiveness in the sense of asking God for it. And God tells you, I have given it to you. Like I read in 1 John 1.8, God is faithful and just to forgive you all righteousness. If you just but ask. And that should encourage you and strengthen your assurance that God loves you when you ask for forgiveness. Or the pastor in the church encourages you by telling you, if indeed you have asked for forgiveness, some Reformed churches do this from the pulpit, that you are forgiven indeed. The church is there to encourage you that these promises are true and to look back to the Bible. Assurance must and can grow by asking for forgiveness. and believing that God is faithful, and He will, and He offers more, because assurance of salvation has fruit, and that fruit is peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Of course you have peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. You feel miserable when you are guilty, and you ought to feel miserable when you are guilty, even as Christians. If you don't, there's a problem. You're suppressing something. Your conscience is no longer tender like it should be. Psalm 51.7 is a nice picture of this. In Psalm 51.7 and following we read, Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me hear joy and gladness that the bones you have broken may rejoice. And so he asked God to forgive him. That's the picture of purging away his sins. that he may have the fruit to hear joy and gladness that the bones you have broken may rejoice. He asks for forgiveness and he therefore gets the fruit of joy and gladness. Do you want that in your life? Then you need to confess your sins, brothers and sisters, or you will be miserable. The psalmist continues, hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. There he is again, crying for forgiveness. It's the language of asking the Father to cover my sins. And the fruit thereof is restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me by your generous spirit. That's the fruit of asking for repentance, brothers and sisters. Do you want the joy of salvation? Do you want the peace of the Holy Spirit? Do you want assurance of salvation strengthened in your life? Then you need to see your sins, confess them with a contrite heart before your Heavenly Father. This is what Christ is giving us. This is what we need. The Lord's Prayer teaches us to come to God daily, to ask for forgiveness of our sins while holding out the promise of assurance and peace and joy. You need to ask for forgiveness from God your Father. May this sermon encourage you to boldly enter the throne room of grace by the blood of Christ and obtain the blessing from your Lord and Savior. Let us pray. the Lord's Prayer, teaching us in many ways, in summary fashion, God, through the rest of the Word of God as well, unpacking the truth, Lord, that it's needful that we ask you for forgiveness. It's needful to repent of our sins, the contrite heart of confession our sins, Lord, in detail, to seek out assurance, peace, and joy. We pray these things for all of us, God. Amen.