Our Sin

It happened on an ordinary day.

Jesus had withdrawn to a solitary place to pray—something he did regularly, a rhythm his disciples had observed countless times. After Jesus finished praying, one of his disciples approached him with a request that would change everything: "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1).

It's a remarkable request when you think about it. These were Jewish men. They'd been praying since childhood. But they'd seen something different in Jesus. They'd watched him pray with an intimacy, an authority, an expectation they'd never witnessed before. His prayers weren't performances or recitations. 

 When Jesus prayed, things happened. Sick people were healed. Demons fled. Storms calmed. The Father's will was done.

We will go deeper in the Lord’s prayer around five phrases in the prayer: Our Father, Your Kingdom, Give us, Forgive us, Lead and Deliver us. This is an invitation to go deeper by Learning to Pray with Jesus.

Transcript

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Thank you for listening to an audio resource from Stanwich Church, located in Greenwich in Stanford, Connecticut. The vision of Stanwich Church is to know Christ and make him known.

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A reading from the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 6, verses 9 through 13. Pray then like this. Our Heavenly Father, may your name be honored. May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day the bread we need. Forgive us what we owe to you, as we have also forgiven those who owe anything to us. Keep us clear of temptation and save us from evil. May God add his blessing to this reading of his holy word.

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On a certain day late in Jesus' ministry, he gave a teaching on forgiveness, and Peter wanted him to know that he was starting to track with the things he was teaching. And so he said to Jesus, So when somebody sins against me, should I forgive him seven times? Now the rabbinical rule of the day was that you were required to forgive three times. So Peter thought he was shining in this moment. He doubled it and added one. And then Jesus responded, No, no, Peter, you forgive 70 times seven. It's really not about the number, it's about the infinite opportunities that you have to forgive. Jesus then went on and told a parable. I call it the parable of the poor manager or the unforgiving manager. Now the reason Jesus used parables, one scholar says they're like houses that he built that you can enter in. They're little movie clips or little stories that grab your heart because you can find yourself in the story. And the story goes like this: there was a king who had a manager of his wealth, and the manager was siphoning some off. We're told in the text it was 10,000 talents, which scholars will say is probably over a billion dollars. That was quite the siphoning move that he had going there. The king came to get an account, and the man fell on his knees and he cried out, Have mercy on me, I'll pay everything back. There was no way he could pay it back, but the king said, I will have mercy on you. And he released him. Then the manager went out and found one of his servants, and this servant owed him a hundred denarii. The difference in the amount of what was owed was 600,000 times. And when the servant came up to him, he said, I need my denari, pay me back. The servant fell on his knees and said, Have mercy on me. And the manager threw him in prison. Well, the king heard about this, and you can imagine what happened next. It was the wealthy manager who ended up in prison. And then Jesus gives this one short commentary that's pretty striking. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart. We're in the middle of our series on the Lord's Prayer. We're in the fourth phrase, first phrase, Abba Father. We experience his love, his holiness. We know who we're approaching. We're praying for his kingdom to come and his will to be done. We find him as Jehovah Jirah, the one who gives us everything that we need. But in today's phrase, we deal with our biggest problem as human beings. It's our sin. And Jesus is going to radicalize us a bit after he gives a few words in commentary on this prayer. Let's go to the prayer itself and draw some things out of it for understanding. Forgive us our sins. Now, depending on which tradition you come from in the Christian faith, there could be trespasses, there could be sins, or there could be debts. I did a memorial service last week and we did the Lord's Prayer and we came to that phrase and we all used different words and started laughing. There's three sources for these words. Trespasses comes from the 1526 Tyndale Bible that immediately got put in the book of common prayer, and this is the one we've rehearsed for so many years, it's hard to get it out of our mind. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. This is the idea of stepping over or beyond God's moral design for us. The two Lord's prayers that are recorded in the Gospels, in Luke, he uses the word hamartia, which is sin, which is to miss the mark. That makes perfect sense to us. But Matthew uses debt here. And really to get at it, we've got to kind of go to his audience to understand. But before I go there, uh I want to share something with you. There's times I just don't want to be with you here. Confession's good for the soul. I'm not thinking about being at the beach. I want to be down in the children's wing. So this morning, as I prayed through the church and I was praying through these pews, I thought, you know, I'm gonna go down in the children's wing, and this is what's set up for our kids. You'll see every definition of trespass, debt, and sin on there. Your children's workers and your youth workers are discipling our kids. You should celebrate that. I mean, you guys are okay. I don't mind doing it with you, but our kids are getting it. We're raising a generation that will walk in the ways of the Lord. Isn't that exciting? But behind this is the solution. What did John the Baptist say? Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Sin is very serious business, but forgiveness is very serious business as well. And we'll never understand and appreciate forgiveness until we own the depth of our sin, of how rebellious we are against God's way. And his forgiveness becomes a gift for us when we really dive into the truth of sin. There's this kind of idea in churches now, don't talk about sin because you'll make people sad. You're a bunch of sinners. I need to talk about sin so you'll get forgiven. Is there anybody who's escaped sin here? I wish there was a day that would come when I would be released completely from the desire. I wish I were a true Wesleyan that believed in full sanctification before you get to heaven. But the truth of the matter is I'll be fine the day after I die. Because that's when I'll be transformed to be like Jesus. But in the meantime, I've got to deal with my sin. Okay, so back to Matthew. Sorry, I got a little bit distracted there. Back to Matthew, he's writing to a primary Jewish audience who would have been reading the scriptures in Greek. So this is the reason he uses the word debt, because there's a debt that's owed in the year of Jubilee. If you remember in Israel's history, every 50th year, if for something happened where you had to sell yourself into slavery or give your family a state up and you had lost it, every 50th year they would call it the year of Jubilee. Because that year everything went back to the original people. Those of you thinking about buying a house, buy it in the 46th year because your mortgage is going to get canceled in four years. No, that's manipulating the system. Well, when they translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek for the diaspora in the second and third century, that's the Septuagint. You see that as LXX when you're studying different biblical documents. They did it because people couldn't read Hebrew. They replaced the word Jubilee with the word aphiem, which is forgive that Matthew uses. Basically, what's being said here is when we come to God and ask for forgiveness, there's a release, a letting go that happens in our life that we get free from the thing that we can't carry for ourselves. You can't pay your billion-dollar debt. You can't. But Jesus has already paid it. And we get to come and leave it at the foot of the cross every time that we gather. Hey, the person who took sin the most serious was Jesus. And yet he can say to a woman, right before he says, Now go and sin no more, he could say, I don't condemn you. You're free from that. Why? Because he knows that sin is what brings us down. It is not satisfying long term. It's a waste. It feels good for a moment. But those of you who have sinned the most are sitting there going, yep. It's been unsatisfying. But the phrase doesn't finish there. Forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. This is past completed action. Forgive us our sins as we also have forgiven. When you've been graced by God, when you've been loved by God, this should be the natural outflow of our life. But the truth of the matter, it's really hard. And Jesus, after his prayer is recorded by Matthew, Matthew throws these words in. Jesus says, 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. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. This sounds contrary to other things that we've heard in Scripture. Doesn't God love us first? Isn't He the one always is He's withholding forgiveness in some way? I think what's being stated by Jesus is I hold all these things in tension, is that our experience of forgiveness is predicated on our willingness to forgive. You follow me on that? Our experience of forgiveness is predicated on our ability to forgive. It's like the forgiveness flows, and if we hold on to it, maybe like the ancient manna, it will rot. But if we will release it, we'll feel the cleansing of the Lord releasing us from our sin. You see, our biggest problem as human beings is sin, but I would say this: I think our biggest problem as Christians is unforgiveness. I think there are people that are physically sick or emotionally bound or spiritually enslaved because we fail to forgive. Forgiveness is what God has given us to free us up so that we're not held in bondage. It's like one author said, when you don't forgive someone, you're giving them space in your brain and they're not paying rent for that space. Or another person has said, uh, drinking uh or bitterness is like drinking poison hoping it kills the other person. But let's be honest, it's not easy to forgive. Let me ask, how many of you have had a very serious conversation in your head this past week while driving the car or in the shower where you were telling that person exactly what they needed to hear? Okay, the rest of you liars, put your hand up. We all do. I found myself this week. I'm thinking, I'm telling this guy off, and he doesn't even know I'm telling him off. Why am I allowing him in my brain? I'm only destroying myself, it's eating me up. And in those moments, I actually had to say, Chuck, there's no kids in here, right? Shut up! Because I was just constructing it over and over. We need to release people. Sin is serious business, but forgiveness is even more serious business. Jesus three different times made some kind of reference to our ability to experience forgiveness being related to our ability to give forgiveness. And as your pastor, I want you to note this is liberation that's waiting to be released in our lives. So, what's my soul what this morning? Every day is a potential Jubilee day, it's a day of release. Every day. So, my exhortation to us is to keep short accounts with God. Don't let it build up. Make repentance a part of your every evening, or don't wait till the evening. Get rid of it in the middle of the day. Some of you sin so much you should set your alarm for 9 o'clock and noon and 3 o'clock. I see some people I'm gonna call out back there. They're smiling really big. He who laughs the loudest is the most guilty, but that's just the way it goes. But I want to play this one step further. Are you willing to forgive yourself? Yeah, I know there's regret in sin. I don't ever want to forget the bitterness that I feel after I've sinned. But I don't want to leave unforgiveness for myself as a place where the enemy has condemnation over me. Some of you just need to forgive yourselves. You're holding on to things that Jesus already paid for. And He wants you to be free from that. My second, so what is this? Every day can be Jubilee, a day of release for people that have offended you. Listen, you're gonna be offended. Some of you will offend me before you leave church today. That's what we do, we're family. The place you get most offense is in your family. Isn't it interesting? It's because the place where you're most welcome. You're not hiding there, and things will come out. You can have offense come to you, but you don't have to become an offended person. You can acknowledge the offense, but don't grip it as your own. And release people for your sake, not just their sake. Three things I want to say real quickly that could be misunderstandings. First one is this you can't always rush forgiveness. I read this recently and I don't know where I found it, but he compared forgiveness to grief. Grief comes in waves, and if the offense that you've experienced is very deep, it could take a while to get to the depths of it. Maybe the first prayer is, Lord, just make me willing to be forgiving. Or make me willing to be willing to be forgiving. That God's hand would be released in our lives. Forgiveness doesn't mean that you have to put away all safe boundaries. I've been thinking about this this week of how to address this. You don't have to put yourself in a dangerous place to forgive. Henry Cloud has written an excellent book called Necessary Endings. And there's just times that you can release someone spiritually, but you don't have to embrace them socially. See, God's reconciliation is always spiritual. It's very deep for us, but it's not always social. And so don't feel guilty if you need to keep some distance for potential dangerous relationships. And the third one is this forgiveness does not obliterate accountability. Many of you are team leaders and you have people that are accountable to you. And all of you, as family leaders, have children and grandchildren are accountable to you. Forgive forgiveness doesn't mean you can just get away with whatever you want. In those situations, we are most gracious when we're calling people to account. Because we're saving them from destroying themselves. I really believe that God wants to do something fresh in our midst today. I felt it all along. I felt it this week. I felt it as God pressed me to my needs to release certain people. The person who probably was offended the most in the Old Testament, it's hard to tell, there was others that were offended, would be Joseph. You know, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. He was for uh forgotten in prison after being falsely accused by Potiphar's wife. He was forgotten by people that he had helped in prison when they could have helped him get out of prison. And God brought him back with his brothers. Powerful moment. Joseph's behind the curtain weeping. And his brothers come to him and say, uh, we hope that you won't do something destructive to us. And Joseph's response is this You meant it for evil, but God has turned it to good for the saving of many. See, God has the ability to take things that have been broken in our lives, treasons that we've experienced, hate that's been directed at us, and redeeming it. And making it for something greater than we ever expected. But it begins by us releasing the people that have offended us. So we're gonna go to a moment of call and response prayer that will take us right into our confession prayer. Call and response is I'll pray for something and then leave space for the Holy Spirit to come work in your heart. As the psalmist says, Lord, search me and know me, know if there be any wicked way in me. And then we're gonna pray our confession prayer together. But after I've prayed, I will say, Lord, have mercy on us, and your response is going to be, Lord, hear our prayer. All right, because I believe God wants us to leave something here today. It's no longer constructive in our life. So join me in prayer. Abba Father, you come to us with love that's encased in truth, because you want the very best for us. You have designs for our life that would be the reflection of Jesus. But we're blocked in some ways because of unforgiveness in our heart. So, Lord, if there's some people that we need to release right now, or some circumstances, or even ourselves, would you come by your spirit and shine your light on those people.

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