laid on my heart as to what we should consider from Scripture. Take your Bibles again, go back to the book of Matthew in chapter 6, and we'll read together the Lord's Prayer again, and we're going to focus just on one verse of it again. And we'll spend this week and next week in this little prayer. Then we're going to move over to the book of Ephesians, and we'll look at Paul's prayers over there. Trust the Lord for some blessing. So Matthew chapter six and beginning at verse nine, he says this. In this manner, therefore, pray 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 forgive our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Some of you may recognize these words, very old words, written by a man in a prison dungeon. This is what he said. He talked about a dream that he had, and he said, behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a great book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked and saw him open the book and read therein, and as he read, he wept and trembled, and not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying, what shall I do? Anybody recognize those words? A couple of you do? Pilgrim's Progress, that's the one, yeah. I was reading again the life of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of my heroes, and he read the book Pilgrim's Progress over a hundred times in his life. And this morning we're going to come and look at one of the greatest problems of our age, and that's the problem of sin and guilt. But the problem is that we don't want to admit it, we don't want to deal with the problem. Instead, what we want to do is we want to self-medicate to try and dull the pain and dull the annoying voice in the back of our heads. We create and indulge in every distraction we can find. In fact, like everything else in this world, we are determined not to deal with the root problem. Instead, what we want to do is strive to alleviate the symptoms. Listen to this quote by John MacArthur, he said this, our culture has declared war on guilt. The very concept is considered medieval, obsolete, and unproductive. People who trouble themselves with feelings of personal guilt are usually referred to therapists, whose task it is to boost their self-image. No one, after all, is supposed to feel guilty. Guilt is not conducive to dignity and self-esteem. Society encourages sin, but it will not tolerate the guilt sin produces. but the answer to dealing with guilt is not to ignore it. That's the most dangerous thing that you can do. Indeed, you need to understand that God graciously implanted a powerful ally within you to aid in the battle against sin. He gave you your conscience and that gift is the key to bringing you joy and freedom. The verse we're focusing on this morning, in case you hadn't figured out, is verse number 12. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Jesus is teaching us, his disciples, about prayer. Lord, teach us to pray. And he's teaching him in this line here, Father, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Jesus in our text talks about or deals with one of the greatest problems that we all must face, not only as unbelievers, but also as we walk as Christian pilgrims through this life of faith, we need to deal with sin and the guilt that it causes. Jesus is teaching his disciples and us who are believers the prayer for forgiveness of debts and sins. I want to approach the text with two different perspectives. One, the believer and their need to be forgiven in order to be saved. I couldn't possibly look at that prayer and not talk about it from that perspective. And the second is this, the believer who needs also to deal with the issue excuse me, the issue of sin and guilt in their lives. In order to maintain a life of forgiveness and joy and peace with God, we must be, as believers, seeking forgiveness from our Father, even as we're granting forgiveness to those who wrong us. The problem for many of us is this, I think it's probably the biggest problem facing the church, is that we don't fully understand three of the scripture's greatest themes. Sin, guilt, and forgiveness. We don't get what those things really mean. Someone asked, I think it was Paul Washer, what the problem was with the church, why the gospel had been so watered down. He said, we don't understand our sin. We don't get what sin really is. So first thing I want to look at this morning is sin, the problem of sin. Now in the verse here it says, he says, Jesus said, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Thanks, mate. In the text, the word for debt is the word aphelites, and it means, it carries the idea of a physical or a moral debt, a debt that requires repayment. In fact, if you look at Luke chapter 11 in verse three, in the parallel account to this one, Luke there uses the word for sin, and it's actually translated as sin. So the idea of debt and sin there are sort of linked together. And aphelites means it's a debt that we have to pay. Another Greek word for sin is this, it's the word hamartia, and it's a very common word, it's the most common word used for sin in the New Testament, and it means to miss the mark or miss the standard of God's righteousness. I might have told you this, but when I was a little kid we went to the, it's called the PNE, which, what does that mean to you? Pacific National Exhibition, those old run-down fairgrounds in Vancouver. I think it's been torn down since now, but there was this old roller coaster you could ride, rickety old thing, and you had to be, there's a little sign at the front, in order to ride this ride you must be this tall. And of course you watch these little kids go up there and they're just straining to get themselves as high as, you know, lifting their hair, anything they can do to make the height to ride the ride. And that's exactly what harmartia means. It means you have to meet this standard. And what harmartia means is that we have all failed to meet that standard. The Bible says in Luke 15, 18, as the rebellious son decides he's gonna go home to his father, he says this, I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I have failed to meet the standards of God in heaven. I have failed to meet. your standards. It's a sin of iniquity. Sin is a failure to measure up to the standards, the absolute holiness and righteousness that God requires. One sin ruins it all. Paraptoma is another word that the Bible uses to describe sin. It's often translated as trespass. It's a carelessness in regard to sin. It's carelessly stepping over the line with not taking a care to make sure that we're walking according to God's standard. And the Bible says in Ephesians 1 verse 7, in him, that's in Christ, We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, or forgiveness of trespasses according to the riches of His grace. Sin is a trespass, it's a carelessness. Another word is this, parabasis. It's a Greek lesson today, as well as a sermon. There you go. It's parabasis. It's a word for transgression. It means to step across the line or the boundary of the law. This is more of a conscious, deliberate act on the sinner's part. He knows exactly what he's doing. I had a friend... He was in school, I can't remember exactly the circumstances, but he tells this great story. I think he was a teacher, and he took his little girl to the hockey game. And in the hockey rink back in those days, you could go down the steps, you could stand right against the ice, and you could actually step on the ice if you want to. Now they have police to keep you from going out there and interfering with the game. He took his little girl and the youngest years ago down the front by the hand. He said, look, you see here, there's a line right here across here, and you're not allowed to step across on. You can go anywhere you want inside this hockey rink arena. You can run around, you can go to the concession stand and get a hot chocolate or whatever you want, but you may not step across the line onto the ice. And he went up to his seat. He sat down. A little girl looked at her daddy and she smiled. She got up. She walked over to the edge of the aisleway going down to the ice and she walked down the steps, right down to the line. She turned around and she put her foot on the line and turned around and faced her daddy up in the ring and she waved. Then she went like this and put one foot right back onto the ice. She knew exactly what she was doing. And her dad, of course, was faced with this great dilemma. What do I do now? She has deliberately defied my rules. And that's exactly what the word means. It's a deliberate defiance of what God has set up as a standard for how we are to behave. It's a conscious, deliberate act. The Bible says in the book of Hebrews two and verse two, for if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast and every, every transgression and disobedience deserved a just reward, meaning what? Meaning every single sin, every single transgression, that deliberate act that we do against our God deserves a just payment. And that's death. Another word is this, anomia. It's a word we translate as lawlessness. It's even stronger in its meaning than parabasis. It has the idea of flagrant lawlessness, deliberate, defiant sin, even more than transgression. And this is a great statement out of Matthew chapter seven, verse 23. Jesus said this, and then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. It's that great statement of Jesus when He condemns those who are lawless to the lost eternity in hell. 1 John 3 and 4 says this, whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness and sin is lawlessness. Sin is, it's lawlessness, it's rebellion, it's iniquity, it's all those other things, it's transgression, it's stepping across a line. In the Old Testament, we have the word meri, and it means a rebellion. Sin is the idea of rebellion as well. In 1 Samuel 15, 23, you know what it says? Samuel's standing there and he's talking to Saul, and Saul has disobeyed the command of God, and he says this, for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry. Sin is a refusal A stubborn refusal to submit to God's authority and live by the rules and standards that God has set for our good and for His glory. Sin isn't a thing we laugh at. We ought not to laugh at it. It isn't a thing that we just sweep under the carpet. Wow, you know, I'm not so bad. I bat, you know, eight out of ten. I'm doing okay. No. Sin is a horrible, horrible thing. If I'd summarize, I'd say it like this. Sin is iniquity, it's missing the mark. Sin is trespass, it's a careless slipping and stepping over. Sin is transgression, a willful disobedience. Sin is lawlessness, a defiant disobedience. Sin is rebellion like witchcraft, and sin incurs a massive debt that must be repaid. Sin is an offense against the holiness of God. I was watching a movie the other night, and one of the girls in this movie, in just absolute contempt for somebody, spat. I sat there and just thought about it for a while. You know, that is what we do when we sin against God. We're spitting in His face. It's so offensive to him. Sin has results. When we sin, we stray from the right path. The Bible says in the book of Isaiah, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every single one of us to our own way. When we sin against God, we're saying, you know what? I don't care about your way. I'll do it my own way. I'll live the way I choose. Listen to these incredible words. Psalm 58 verse three. This actually struck a chill in my heart when I read them. The wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born. Speaking lies. All of us were born in sin. And from the very womb, we are going our own way. We're doing our own thing. We're stubbornly fighting against authority and against God. When we commit sin, we become unclean. The Bible says, and it's great that that song we were singing is actually almost a verse out of this scripture, verse 18 of chapter one of Isaiah. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. They are red like crimson, they shall be as wool. It's the idea that sin stains us, like someone taking a beautiful white wedding dress and getting a black bucket of black oozing mud and just throwing it on the dress. It stains it and marks it completely. The reason we need to be washed and cleansed is because of the defilement that sin leaves. David prayed, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. The idea of washing there means to wash and wash and wash and wash and scrub and scrub and scrub to get it clean. It's a repeated thing. When we commit sin, we bring judgment on ourselves. The Bible says in Jude 14 and 15, behold, the Lord comes with 10,000 of his saints to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds, which they've committed in an ungodly way. Sin brings God's judgment. In the story of Pilgrim's Progress, he runs, flee, flee, the wrath to come. That's what his whole idea is, to get away from the wrath that's coming. Sin isn't only bad, it's also wrong. Sin is bad in the sense of its ugliness, its impurity, and its repulsiveness. I'll never forget John Baker preaching on the The guy with leprosy. He said it was a repulsive thing, this man with this rotting flesh on his living body. That's exactly what sin is. Sin is hated by God because it is not good. Sin is the opposite of all that God desires for us. Sin affects us by marring and vandalizing the image of God in which we are created. Sin is against the law of God. It's disobedience and therefore deserving of God's punishment. Sin stresses it, sorry, Scripture stresses that the sinful condition is deeply rooted in human nature and we are born with it. We can do nothing to help ourselves, to save ourselves. Scripture also says that only, listen, only God is able to pay sin's penalty and break sin's power and drive out sin's presence. What does sin do to us? There are consequences, like a few I just mentioned. There's separation from God, spiritual death, and physical death, and eternal death. But we also have guilt, and this one I want to focus on. Guilt is a state of one who has committed a sin or a crime. Guilt is brought about by the conscience, and conscience is that God-given capacity inside each one of us to know ourselves and to know what's right or wrong, to judge with us whether this activity is right or wrong. It's a little voice inside that says, that's a bad idea. A little voice saying, you know what, you should not do that because that's a wrong action. And the Bible tells us that those who don't have the word of God, don't have the gospel, God will judge them on the basis of how they respond to their conscience. We have guilt because of what we do. It is there because the conscience reminds us that we should have done something else. In 1 Samuel 24, There's a scene where David's in the back of this great big cave, and he's hiding in the very back corner of the cave, and all his men are all huddled in there with him, and Saul comes into the entrance of the cave, King Saul, who's trying to find David to kill him, and he sits down to relieve himself, and the men say, there it is, David. It's your chance, man. Take the sword, step up behind him, put your sword straight through the ribs and out the front, and your problems are over. David creeps forward and takes the sword, and cuts the corner of the king's robe off and creeps back. How he did that is beyond me without disturbing the king. You know what the Bible says? Listen. It happened afterward that David's heart troubled him because he had cut King Saul's rope. That word troubled, that speaks of the conscience's work to provoke David, and David was provoked and he was convicted of his sin. He had lifted his sword and his hand against the Lord's anointed king who was then in control, and he stepped forward to confess his sin to Saul, knowing that Saul could take his life for what he was doing. but his conscience troubled him. Guilt is brought on by the conscience. It's to aid and provoke us to take the right course of action. Scripture describes guilt as something the sinner bears or carries. In Psalm 38 verse four it says this, for my iniquities have gone over my head like a heavy burden. They are too heavy for me. Remember Bungan's Pilgrim? The great big burden on his back? That's the guilt that we carry. And every single one of us knows that feeling of guilt. It's a sense that somehow there's a debt to pay and I can't pay it. All of us have had that time when you've gotten the first visa bill in the mail, you know? And you look through those lists of things and you just go, man, it just adds up and adds up and adds up. It just seemed like two bucks here and three bucks there and 20 bucks over here and 100 bucks over there. And you think, how could it possibly be so much? And you discover to your horror, you haven't got enough money to pay the bill. And that sense of weight that falls on your shoulders to realize you have a debt that must be paid. That's a sense of what guilt is. It's the weight that you feel knowing that you have wronged somebody. It's like when you do something and you know you shouldn't, you say something too quickly, you speak out of turn, you deal with someone harshly, and next time you see them, you just feel that pinch inside that says, oh, you shouldn't have done that. And there's that guilt that loads us down. Guilt is a terrible weighing that sin leaves behind. What struck me as I was studying this yesterday was this, is that we commit a sin and in a moment that sin might be committed and it's over and done, the action is started, it's carried through, and it's finished. But you know what carries on for months, even years afterwards, is the guilt that we carry around because of that sin. The sin's finished. Long after the sweet taste of the stolen apple has faded, guilt is a bitter reminder of an unalterable past. I can't go back in time and undo what I did. And all humans stand as guilty sinners before God. What a tragedy. Think about the story of the Bible, what an incredible tragedy. We were created in the image and likeness of God, but sin has defiled and scarred that image. We were created to enjoy deep, sweet, intimate fellowship with God, our heavenly creator, but sin has alienated us to an infinite distance separated from our creator. We were created to glorify God in worshipful obedience, but sin has destroyed that, so all we do is greedily seek for ourselves first and last and only. We fail to glorify God by obeying his commands. We fail to glorify God by worshiping in reverent fear. The guilt we carry around nags us to remind us that we have offended God. We have a debt to pay. We have defiled and dirtied ourselves. Remember something here. Jesus is teaching his disciples, Father, forgive us our debts. If you're a sinner here this morning, or sorry, we're all sinners, if you're a believer here this morning and you're living in a state of sin, you've committed sin in your life and you've left it to carry on, listen, I want to tell you something. The Bible says we can never, ever lose that position with God our Father. No sin that you or I ever commit, even as believers, is greater than the grace of God. but the relationship between us and the Father, our Heavenly Father, will be strained and hindered and grieved. The Spirit of God is grieved from working in our lives. Our prayer times will seem dry and hollow, bouncing off the ceiling and falling down again, it seems. At times, no work will be a struggle. We won't get much out of our reading. Times seem fruitless. Every verse seems to remind us of the sin we have committed. I never forget, I lied to my dad about something as a teenager. I went in my room and I was trying to be a good Christians over my Bible. I try to read I'm reading and you know what? I'm reading on every line Go tell your dad you lied It's not in the Bible But every time I read a line of scripture, that's all I got out of it, was go and tell your dad, you need to confess, you've sinned, and you gotta put it right. I couldn't get anything, the sentences didn't even make sense. That's all I could hear in the back of my mind, is you gotta put that right, and finally I got so frustrated, I thought, you know what, the spirit of God's not gonna leave me alone, my conscience won't shut up, so I closed my Bible, I went out, I told my dad the whole story, I apologized, confessed my sin, and he accepted that, and I went back, and it's amazing, all of a sudden the Bible made sense again. It was like just for a time there, God put a shield over top and said, I won't let you understand until you deal with your problem. That's the work of the Spirit of God in us, convicting us of our need to put things right. The conviction of our Holy Spirit-empowered conscience will be relentless. until we come and seek forgiveness. We as believers who sin need to ask God's forgiveness, much like when we wrong, we men, we wrong and sin against our wives. The marriage isn't over, the love is still there, but the fellowship, the intimacy is strained, and the silence gets really loud and long, and every guy in the room knows that moment when you've said something to your wife in a harsh moment, and you know you shouldn't have said that to your wife, and your wife gets very, you know, colder in the room, right? And the conversation gets short and strained. And it gets a little more difficult to talk, and every conversation is just, it's awkward. That's exactly the way it is between us and our God when we commit sin against Him. If we are a believer, the relationship is still there. We are still eternally adopted sons. He does not cut us off and cast us out, but the relationship is strained. But for those of us who've never ever trusted Christ for salvation and never repented of sin, your situation is infinitely worse. You stand under the judgment of God. Listen to one of the most beautiful phrases and most often quoted verse in the Bible and the ones that follow it. They go like this. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He or she who believes in him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God, unbelieving sinner. Listen, you stand in terrible peril of eternal damnation. That's the reality of the scriptures. That's the reality of your situation before God. Sin is terrible, it's bad, it's negative. And preaching some of this is so difficult because it feels like it's such a weighty, heavy thing. And you don't want to do that. You want to preach light, fluffy things. But the reality is there's two parts of the news. There's bad news and there's good news. And the reality is the bad news is so bad that when you hear the good news, it's so much better and so much greater. They just have to put the two together. The bad news is bad, that we have a terrible situation. We can't deal with the sin and the guilt that heavy weighs upon us. But the good news is God has provided a way to escape, to escape his judgment, to escape the never-ending torment of hell, to escape the meaningless life without God, to live life free of the guilt of sin. that plagues us, to live in absolute, undeniable assurance that we are loved, you are adopted, you're a child of the king, you're a son and daughter of the living God, you're filled with the spirit of God, you have an eternal home in heaven. The good news, the gospel is that God is a God of grace and God longs to forgive. What is forgiveness? Jesus taught them, Father, forgive us our debts and our sins. Forgive. It is God, our Heavenly Father, to whom we pray, whom he only is the one that can forgive sin. It's God that longs to forgive. Take your Bibles and go to Luke 15. You can't describe this any other way than this beautiful scene in Luke 15. In Luke 15, verse 17 to 20, I'm gonna read it for you. It says this. that's speaking about the parable of a lost son. And he's taken his inheritance, he's gone off to a far land, he's lived his life in absolute wild debauchery. He's had all the best parties with all the best people involved. And the Bible says a famine came into the land, which means what? He ran out of money. He didn't have any other way to live for himself. And so finally he gets a job and the only job he can get is feeding pigs, the pigs swill. And the Bible says in verse 17, but when he came to himself, it means he came to a right sense of where he should be, he said, how many of my father's hired servants have bread enough to spare and I perish with hunger? I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants. And he arose and came to his father, but, When he was still a great way off, his father sought him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. If you're sitting here this morning, believer or unbeliever, and you're carrying around the guilt of sin that you have committed and you've never gone to your heavenly father to seek forgiveness out of shame or belief, shame or pride, sorry, he is not sitting back. God, our heavenly father, he doesn't sit back and say, I'll never come back. Why'd I save her? Why'd I save him? What's all that? Listen, he is longing to see you return. He's longing to see you. And the moment that we turn around and begin to head back towards God in repentance and confession and faith, he will run to meet us. He was looking a long way off. He's standing on the porch of the house, staring off in the distance, waiting to see some sign that the little guy was coming back, and finally he sees him, and he jumps off the porch, and he runs through town, runs to meet him, and he grabs him, and he hugs him, and he kisses him. He longs to see him, and our Heavenly Father longs for us to return. My father, I want to tell you about him a little bit. This is what the Bible says. He is a pardoning God. A God that brings pardon. He's ready to forgive. Try again in English. Nehemiah 9, verse 17 says this, but you are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in kindness. In Exodus 34, it says this, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and by no means clearing the guilty, God longs to forgive us. We're the ones that's so slow to God, don't want to do that. But God does not, God does not and he will not clear the guilty. What does that mean? Why does the writer throw that line in the very end there? It means this, that repentant sinners are forgiven and unrepentant sinners will not be forgiven. God longs to forgive us. So why pray, Father, forgive us our debts and sins? Because we desperately need forgiveness to remove the guilt, and because He, our Heavenly Father, longs to forgive us and cleanse us. My Father, our Father, is a compassionate God towards us. He's forgiving our iniquity. Psalm 78 says this, but He, that's speaking of God, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them. The Bible says that our Father is a God who forgives, choosing not to remember. The Bible says in Psalm 103, as far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed our transgressions from us. That's not a circle, a straight line. If you can somehow go all the way to the east and then go all the way to the west in a straight line, that's how far God removes us. It isn't because God has dementia or Alzheimer's. He's not forgetful. He simply chooses not to remember. You go back to God and say, you remember that thing I did? And he says, no, I choose not to remember. I have wiped the slate clean. I have removed that sin. I have cleared away the guilt. But what does it mean to be forgiven? It means that God deals graciously with us. God releases us. The word apollio in the Greek and in the Testament literally means that to let go of something. The word in our text, forgive us, is the word aphasis, and it means to release, to let go, or listen to this, it actually has the idea of divorcing or sending away. tearing something completely apart and never ever bringing it back together again. So he forgives, he lets go of his right to retribution because somebody else has taken that place for us. To summarize, forgiveness from a few words means this. Forgiveness is God's gracious, unmerited dealing with us to release us, to set us free from the penalty of sin, to release us from the burden and plague of guilt, and to wash us clean of the filth and the stain that sin leaves behind. Forgiveness is inextricably linked to the cross, by the way. Hebrews 9.22 tells us this, without the shedding of blood, There is no remission, no forgiveness. We were singing about the blood and Justin was talking about the blood in his communion part there. It's the blood. In Christ the Bible says we have redemption through his blood. The forgiveness of sins, the shedding of blood is directly related to how we are forgiven. It's because Christ's blood was used to pay my penalty. Christ's blood was used to wash me clean. Jesus suffered and died on a cross to purchase your salvation, to set you and me free. Christ died to pay the penalty, the debt that you and I incurred by your sin and my sin. Christ died to wash us clean, clean of sin's defilement and the lasting burden of sin. Jesus died to set you free. And for some strange reason, we are so stubborn, we hang on to our sin for all we're worth. What does forgiveness require of us? It requires prayer and faith. You read the book of First Kings in chapter eight, you'll see over and over and over again as Solomon stands up on a little platform and he's dedicating this great, big, beautiful, gold temple behind him. And he says over and over again, hear, O God, and forgive. Hear, O God, and forgive. It means what? It means that we need to pray and ask God to be forgiven. Jesus is teaching us to pray, to plea with God and ask for that thing in forgiveness. And every prayer that we offer, if we offer it in meaning and we simply ask God, expecting God to answer, it's a prayer offered in faith. If you come before God and say, listen, Father in heaven, I've sinned against you. I need to be forgiven. And I ask that in faith that you'll do it. God guarantees that he will do that. Scripture guarantees it. Forgiveness also requires confession of sin. You say, what's that? Psalm 32 verse five says this, I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. First John 1.9, most of us know this from teenage or Sunday school days. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. You remember the scene in the Old Testament? Achan got taken in his sin. The Israelites are marching around Jericho all those days, and seven times in the last day, and the walls fall down, and God says, everything is to be destroyed, nothing is to be kept, and Achan goes in, looks both ways, and sees a wedge of gold, some silver, and a Babylonish garment, and he takes him up, and he puts him under his coat, and he hides him on the bottom of his tent. And of course, they go to the next battle, and 35 people destroy a whole bunch of the Israelites, and then they come back, and they're, what are they supposed to do? What's going on? And Joshua prays before God, and God says, there's sin in the camp. and all the tribes are caused to pass before Joshua, and Achan's tribe is taken, and then Achan's clans are passed before Joshua, and Achan's clan is taken, and then the families, and finally, there's nobody left, but Achan, his wife, and three kids, and they come walking before, and he's the one taken, and Joshua says, listen, Achan, give glory to God, tell me what you have done, and Achan lists it out, he says, I saw, I coveted, I took, and I hid. and he confessed his sin, and what's required of us is going before God and saying, listen, this is what I have done, and we list it out for God. Why, because God is into gory details? No, but when we spell it out before God, it allows his grace and his kindness to cover over it and wash it clean, to wash it away. Confession simply means that we agree with God. He is right and we are wrong. Confession means that we spell out before God the sin we've committed, agreeing to its nature. A can confess his sins, spelling out what he's done. And lastly, forgiveness requires repentance. It means that we turn around and go the other way. What point would there be in standing before God and saying, you know what? I confess my sin of stealing. And as we're confessing, in our minds, we're already thinking, you know, I just saw that thing over there, I'll just go over there and take that for myself. For forgiveness requires repentance. It requires a commitment, the striving before God not to do it again, to put away sin, to deal with it and be done with it. We ask for forgiveness, striving to end the sin. We ask for forgiveness and further ask God not to bring us to the place where we'll be tended by sin further. Look what Jesus says in the next part of the verse there. Verse 13, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. He understands that in asking for forgiveness, there's also the need to ask to keep us from going back to the same place again and falling into the same sin again. There's one more thing that forgiveness requires, and it comes in the second part of the verse, as we forgive our debtors. Having experienced the grace of God in being forgiven, we display that grace in forgiving others too. Listen to what Jesus said about this in the New Testament. Mark 11, 25 and 26, and whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, notice the all-inclusiveness. anything at all, against anyone else at all. Forgive him that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses. Luke 17 says this, take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him, and if he repents, and he, sorry, if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you, seven times in a day, and in seven times a day, he returns to you saying, I repent, you shall forgive. I don't think any of us have ever tried to put that into test. Seven times in one day. My brother sins against me? Ah, dude, I'm really sorry. Okay, it's cool, I forgive you. Dude, I'm sorry, I did that again, you know, I'm really sorry. It's okay, I forgive you. That's twice. Hours go by, and then a third time, and then a fourth time. I don't know about you, but about five or six, I begin to wonder about the guy's sincerity. Does he really mean it? But Jesus says, you know what, if he comes back again and again and again and says, I was wrong, forgive me, he says, you shall forgive him. The problem with this, and the great difficulty, a lot of people struggle over why Jesus says it this way, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, is it suggests a little bit the idea of works. If I don't forgive other people, then God won't forgive me. That's not what it means. What it means is simply this, is that having received the grace of forgiveness, we show and we prove the grace that we have been given. We show and we prove and we display it to everybody else. We who have been forgiven cannot hold back in forgiving somebody else. It's like the unjust steward, you know? His master has a debt against him that's so many hundreds of billions of dollars in our money today. And the master forgives him all of his debt. Same idea, same word. And the master comes out and finds a friend of his, he owes him about $25, if that. And he's so angry because the man hasn't paid him back that he throws him in the deepest hell, deepest hole, sorry. And the master comes along and finds out what's going on. He says, you wicked servant, I forgave you so much. How many of us are like that? You think, well, you don't know how much I've been hurt. You don't know how much people have sinned against me. I can tell you my own experience, my own life, I've been hurt deeply by the people. I've wrestled with this one. No, that hurt was too much. The reality is we go and we stand at the foot of the cross and we look up and we see a savior hanging on a cross. We see the blood running down. We look at his face for a moment and see the contortion of pain and suffering in his face. And we realize in a moment that we have suffered nothing compared to our father has suffered because of our sin and our guilt. and our sin against Him. And Jesus is saying, listen, He's asking. We are to ask our Father, forgive us our debtors, our debts, sorry, as we forgive our debtors. The idea there is forgive us because we're forgiving and we're extending that grace and we're showing it to other people. Our forgiveness is to be in the very same manner of Christ who forgave us. Listen to what the Bible says in Ephesians 4, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. Remember the story of the prodigal son? His father saw him while he was a long way off and he ran to meet him and hug him and kiss him. And he's so busy hugging the kid and getting the ring and the robe and the sandals and calling for the fatted calf. And the son's trying to get a word in edgewise to talk to the father and say, no, no, no, I don't deserve any of this. And the father's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. And he's just throwing love at him and throwing grace and throwing forgiveness at him. And how many of us Let me back up. How often do I see somebody who has wronged me and all I can do is try and avoid them and walk the other way? You know what convicts me about this whole message? This point. How slow I am. And God really rebuked me and said, how often do you think that you need to go to somebody and just make peace? To forgive, to let it go. And Jesus is saying, listen, you forgive. It shows the grace that you have received from the Father. Colossians 3, 12 and 13 says this, therefore as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if anyone all inclusive, has a complaint against another, even as Christ forgave you, so you also should. That's not what it says. You also must do. The display of God's grace that we are to show one another is to forgive each other in the very same way that we have been forgiven. What's the message for us? What's the message? Pray. Number one, pray. pray and ask to forgive our sin. He says us and our again, it doesn't say you and me, me and my, I, he uses plural pronouns. I believe what that means is that we need to be as a people of God praying for each other, that each other will seek out God's forgiveness in their lives, all of us. have sin that we need to deal with. All of us need to go before God and set those things right. We pray and we plead with God to have grace in our lives and grace in others' lives to bring them to the place where they can forgive, and all of us need to seek forgiveness from each other when necessary, and also to be granting forgiveness to each other the moment it's asked. You say, dude, People ask, should we forgive before? People have even asked for it, and my answer's always the same. We are ready immediately to forgive. The father and the prodigal son, he stood on the porch and waited. He didn't go to where the son was. He stood there and waited, and the moment he saw the son from a distance coming towards him, he vaulted off the stage and booted down to meet the kid and hugged him. Meaning what? Meaning we're always ready to forgive. Willing to forgive. Would you stand with me for a breath? Father in heaven, we come before you again and we just give you thanks. Father, we stand back in awe when we realize the greatness of the love and the grace that you have poured out on us. Father, just considering for a few minutes what sin is like, the ugliness of sin, the willful defiance. We are your creatures. You are God and we are men. And we defy you when we sin. We step across the line. And Father, we care little. And Father, how much that grieves you. Father, Justin was reading those passages in Isaiah 53. With his stripes, we are healed. And Father, remember that verse in the same chapter that says, that you shall see of the travail of his soul, the agony, the suffering of his soul, and be satisfied. Father, we thank you for the immense, immeasurable grace that you have poured out on us. Father, the Lord Jesus came to suffer and die on a cross to set us free so we could walk and live enjoying and loving you, loving each other, enjoying the life that you have given to us. Father, we can look forward to an eternity in your presence. Father, we plead with you this morning for anybody standing in this room this morning that there is sin between two believers. Father, we pray that you would bring them both in grace to the point of asking for forgiveness and granting it. Father, we pray with you too that if someone's standing here this morning that doesn't know you, has never trusted you for salvation, Father God, we cry out to you that you would trouble them in their spirit, that the spirit of God would provoke and convict them of their need to turn and trust and ask forgiveness, confess their sin and know what it is to be saved. Father, we cry out to you for a work of your spirit this morning. And we ask you these things, Father, in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, we're done.