We are taking time these Lord's Day evenings as we finish our catechism for the year to look finally at the Lord's Prayer in detail. And we are looking slightly ahead of schedule, if you will, because the last week or two of the year we'll have sermons likely unrelated to the catechism. So we're slightly ahead of this week's installment. But hear the Word of God from Matthew chapter 6. Verse 9, 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. Let's pray together. Lord, now we ask that by Your Spirit, the very Word of Christ, proclaim, would be the Word of Christ to the hearts of the people of Christ. That we would recognize the voice of our Shepherd as He speaks in the finished revelation of our Triune God, who has given us everything necessary for life and godliness in the food of His Word. We pray now that as we look at a sentence which we've likely thought about and heard and stated so many times, that You would convict us and exhort us, counsel us and comfort us, we ask. In Jesus' name, Amen. We've said it many times, and perhaps you grew up in a church where you often recited the so-called Lord's Prayer. We've said this before. Really, it's a model prayer, for Jesus prayed in many ways throughout the course of His earthly ministry. But how many times have we said, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And yet, once again, we see that just like in the praying for daily bread, and just like the opening of the Lord's Prayer, the Lord is giving us rich theology as He's teaching us to pray. Several years ago, our church walked through a sermon series over one summer entitled, or simply put, about the means of grace. The ordinary things that the Lord uses to strengthen and increase our faith, namely, the ordinary, regular events, preaching, sacraments, and prayer. There are many things that the Lord uses to strengthen and increase the faith of his people, but it's prayer that the Lord has given to us as a model here. And as we look at it, prayer is a means that he uses to strengthen and increase our faith. And one of the ways that he does that is that when we pray according to the biblical pattern We are being reminded in those very prayers of the rich Word of Christ. So we are commanded to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Several things to say. First of all, what does the word debt mean? We often use that word in terms of credit cards and mortgage and car payments. But just to make sure we're all on the same page, debts here is a word which stands for our sins. I don't know if you know this or not, but there is another version of the model prayer over in Luke chapter 11. It's basically identical. And we aren't to think that there's trouble because Matthew and Luke's recording of the Lord's Prayer might be slightly different. Just to be clear, if all of us left this room today and were to drive by a house that was on fire, and police and firefighters were to come and ask us all one by one what our Testimony is, what did you see? Some of us would describe certain details that others of us would leave out. Not because we're lying, and not because either of us is telling a falsehood, but because each of us is giving an account from our perspective. So when we see the four gospels, many would say if they don't exactly give the same details, then they can't be trusted. And I would submit to you that the difference in details is a rich tapestry, a mosaic in which the Lord is forming through four different men of the life of Christ. But over in Luke's gospel, in Luke 11.4, the phrase is rendered, forgive us our sins. So Dez here is speaking about sin. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Why is it that we would pray such a thing? Again, I refer you to Willemus Abrakel's great series, A Christian's Reasonable Service, where he walks through the Heidelberg Catechism and prints four volumes of theological writing. But in that volume, he talks about the different kinds of ways that we sin. So let's just look as we think about Jesus' words. Jesus would have been steeped in the Old Testament. So just a quick scan through. Psalm 51, verse 4. Firstly and chiefly, we should see this. When we think about praying for forgiveness, we need to keep in mind that our sins are against God. Psalm 51, verse 4. I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned. and done this evil in your sight." When we're commanded to pray for forgiveness of sins, we're firstly to remember that our sins are against a just and holy and right God. But if we were to continue through the pages of Scripture, we would see at least four ways in which our sin is a type of forsaking of God. A type of forsaking. So firstly, Isaiah chapter 1 verse 4. Isaiah chapter 1 and verse 4. Sin is forsaking God. For example, Isaiah 1 verse 4, Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors. They have forsaken Yahweh. They have forsaken the Lord. They have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel. They have turned away backward. Sin is against God and it's a forsaking of God. But sin is also a forsaking of God's law. Sin is also a forsaking of God's law. Jeremiah chapter 9 and verse 13. Jeremiah chapter 9 and verse 13. The word of the Lord says this. Shall I not punish them for these things, says the Lord? Shall I not avenge myself on such a nation as this? If you read this passage, there's a discussion here of the people of God and their forsaking of God's law. But if we were to continue in Jeremiah, our sins are not only a forsaking of God and His law, but a forsaking of His covenant. Forsaking of His covenant. Jeremiah 22 and verse 9. And many nations will pass by this city, and everyone will say to his neighbor, Why has the Lord done so to this great city? Then they will answer, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshipped other gods, and served them. One last example. Romans chapter 2 and verse 8. Romans chapter 2 and verse 8. There we see that sin is forsaking God's truth. Forsaking God's truth. Romans 2 verse 8. To those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness. Now why do we take the time to point out all the different ways in which our sin is a forsaking of God, of His law, of His covenant, of His truth? Because oftentimes it's easy for us just to see sin mounting. And really, when we are commanded to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, sometimes sin just becomes this nebulous thing. But brothers and sisters, sin is multifaceted. It's ultimately against God, but it's a forsaking of God. It's a despising and a forsaking of His law, His ways. It's a forsaking of His covenant promise. It's a forsaking of His truth. So when we pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. It might be helpful for us to think of it in these ways. God, forgive us for our sins against You. Forgive us for turning our back on You. Forgive us for turning our back on Your holy law. Forgive us for taking Your covenant and trampling on it, or calling it less than important when we value something over it. Forgive us for making our own truth and thereby forsaking Your truth. Do you confess your sins and repent of them in such a way Or is it simply just, forgive my sins, Lord? If we dig down deep, sin is a forsaking of God in a whole host of ways. But the Lord Jesus has said to those who follow him, when you pray, pray this, forgive us our debts. Sin then is multifaceted as we've seen. So what are we to do? We'll turn over to 1 Peter chapter 3 in verse 18. Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, we have an issue that we need to deal with. Is Jesus asking us to continue to pray that our sins would be forgiven because there is an ongoing reality in which our sins continue to not be forgiven? I mean, we've just taken a few minutes to flip through the pages of Scripture. Our sins are against God, they're forsaking God, His law, His covenant, His truth. But when you pray the Lord's Prayer, when you ask the Lord to forgive you for something, are you praying for new forgiveness, meaning you have either lost your justification, your being declared rightness, your forgiveness in Christ, or is something else going on? And see, that's why we turn to 1 Peter 3. Christ is the one-time means of our forgiveness. He died a death once. The writer of Hebrews says that there is no other death for Him to die. So when we pray, forgive us our debts, what are we asking God to do? Are we saying, Lord, we continue to come up with new ways in which we're not forgiven? Are we saying that if we die in that moment and hadn't asked for forgiveness for this sin or that sin, that we're not forgiven? In other words, brothers and sisters, is Jesus giving us a model by which we can stay in the process of justification? Or is He doing something else? Have you ever thought about that? What does it mean to ask God to forgive you? I thought we were forgiven for past sins, present sins, and future sins. So when the Lord says, pray this, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Is there a sense in which we constantly go from unforgiven to forgiven, unforgiven to forgiven? And that's where 1 Peter 3 is helpful. Again, the writer speaks to Jesus' death being a once for all death to sin. Turn over then to Romans 5. Romans 5. Romans chapter 5 and verse 10. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. Now many of you are thinking, well, the Lord's prayer was pretty clear to me. I was just praying for forgiveness and now you've troubled me, preacher. What are you asking? Here's what I'm asking you, brothers and sisters. When you ask the Lord to forgive you, what are you asking? Are you saying to Him, Lord, I have this mountain of sins this week, this day, this hour, this minute, and I need You once again to re-justify me, to make me righteous again. Is the Lord's prayer a plea of the defendant to the judge. Or, brothers and sisters, is the Lord's Prayer the relational cry of a child to a father? I would submit to you When you get to the phrase, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, the opening words of the Lord's Prayer become all the more precious. You have already confessed at the beginning of your prayer that God is your Father. So when we pray, forgive us our debts, we're not asking the Lord to take people who are continually unjustified and have to stay in a system of works-based justice. We're saved. If we are children of God and God is our Father, we have been forgiven. God has declared us forgiven for all time. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no sin that will stand against us in the last day. There is no reason under heaven or on earth why you should ever doubt. that God, who has declared you just and righteous in Christ, will change His mind. Brothers and sisters, the Lord's Prayer is not a plea of the defendant over and over and over that the judge would offer a verdict. But rather, it's a child coming to a father and saying, Father, there's something between us. There's something that I am bringing to you. You see, we have to consider the Lord's Prayer with the rest of the text, don't we? Boys and girls, as you grow up and you learn to read the Bible and study it, one of the main rules that will save you from lots of agony is reading the Bible alongside the Bible. Meaning, don't take one verse and think that that verse says everything. You gotta read that verse with other verses. The Lord's prayer is a prayer of a child to a father. See, the forgiveness in view is not a re-justification, but a fatherly relational conversation. Similarly then, turn over to 1 John 1. 1 John 1 and verse 9. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. How many of you have heard that verse? And you've thought to yourself, I'm going to constantly be in a state of unrighteousness. And this has to do with justification. And you've lived your lives praying prayers of forgiveness, hoping that the Lord would forgive you for the next whoops. See, brothers and sisters, when the Lord declares His children righteous, He adopts them, makes them His own, and He enters into a father-child relationship to them. We've got to be careful taking earthly relationships and saying that God is like earthly fathers. But there is a sense in which passages like 1 John 1-9 teach us something about our relationship with God. The courtroom is done. When we confess our sins, actually it could be translated from the Greek if we continue to confess our sins. He continues to be faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It's a fatherly relational conversation. Now lest you think that I made that up out of thin air. Once again, listen to Dutch Puritan, if you will, Willemus Abrakel. In praying for forgiveness here, the supplicant, boys and girls, that's the person praying, the supplicant does not view himself as unconverted and unreconciled and as desirous to be delivered from the state of wrath. Believers being children of wrath by nature as all others. Rather, he views himself as being a child of God, for he prays, Our Father, forgive us. God deals with his children in human fashion. As a father shows his displeasure over the misbehavior of his children, God likewise shows his displeasure to his children when they have sinned. He withdraws himself from intimate fellowship with them, hides his countenance, lets them feel his fatherly, fatherly wrath, and punishes them with a remorseful, restless, and anxious conscience. Inner peace has departed, and a lack of freedom overcomes them within and without. Such a condition causes the believer to be very perplexed, and he goes to his father, confesses his misdeeds, takes refuge to the blood of the Lord Jesus, and prays, Forgive! To such, the Lord will manifest himself and he will forgive them, I love this, time and again. I think Abraham hits the nail right on the head writing in the year 1700. We pray, brothers and sisters, a prayer that is for the children of God. The Lord's prayer is not for unbelievers. Unbelievers cannot call God Father. Sure, he is the creator, and as such, he is the father of all things, yes, but this is a prayer for the family. This is our prayer. We get to go to God and say, God, make Your name glorified in our midst. We get to go to God and ask Him for our next bite of food. And we get to go to God as Father, not as judge, as Father, and say, there's something in between us. Would you cleanse it? Father, I'm sorry for my sins. Christ has done away with it. And in the courtroom, You've already justified me, so I'm not coming to You begging You to re-justify me. What I'm doing is asking you as a father, son to father, daughter to father, would you cleanse this? Would you give me again the light of your countenance? So we are told to pray, forgive us our debts. But before we close, there's a second part to that phrase, isn't there? As we forgive our debtors. as we forgive our debtors. And it's that phrase that I want us briefly to see four things about. Hopefully your translation renders it this way. I know of no English translation that doesn't. But it's rendered as we forgive, not because we forgive. You see, you'll put yourself in a world of hurt if you change that one word in your mind. Forgive us our debts because we forgive our debtors. In other words, we are meriting something. Lord, your favor to forgive us as a father, or perhaps as a judge, if we're looking at it that way, is based on our performance. No, this is not meritorious. It's descriptive. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. So number two, this is descriptive. There's a descriptive element here. People who are in the family forgive those who are in the family. We forgive because we've been forgiven. This is a description of us. The kind of people that the Lord is fashioning are those people who've been forgiven much. The Father looks upon them with pure love and returns His countenance time and time again as a father to a son, a father to a daughter. So we, in suit, follow. This is descriptive of who we are. So it's not meritorious, number one. And number two, it describes us. But number three, our pattern is like God's, But we don't forgive as God forgives. In other words, it's not one for one. We don't have to look at this and say, this is how the Lord forgives us, this is the process by which He forgives us, so we in turn are doing the exact same thing. The infinite God forgives finite creatures in one way, and finite creatures model that with other finite creatures, but we shouldn't assume that it's a one-for-one kind of thing. It's a pattern. But lastly, we need to look at the two verses after the Lord's Prayer to see this. There is a threat here. Look at verse 14 of Matthew 6. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. You see, now we're going back to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And we're beginning to think, maybe there is some merit here. Maybe there is a sense in which if we don't do something, God won't do something. And the threat of God withholding forgiveness in verses 14 and 15 is His threat of withholding the peace of relationship restored with the Father, not the loss of salvation. I'm gonna say that again, this is crucial. When the Lord says, if you don't forgive the family, If you don't forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will not forgive you." What is he saying? If you don't do something, I won't save you. Here is where context is key. This is a part of the family prayer. The Lord is not saying, you must forgive or else you will not have salvation. Most directly, in context, the Lord is saying, if you live a life in the family withholding forgiveness, holding on to grudges, living the Christian life in such a way that you don't forgive others, following the model and pattern that I've given you, you won't know the peace of relationship with me that you could. Again, the forgiveness in view is a father to a child. Notice what it says. If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours. What is in view here in this threat is God's countenance. Knowing the peace of right relationship with the Father. If you want to say that this is about justification, this is about salvation, this is as far as we can go. We can say this, if a person is living a life of bitterness and grudges and refuses to repent of the sin of not forgiving others when properly sought out. That may be a sign that this person doesn't know the grace of God. Maybe. That's as far as we can go. But what we dare not do is look at this passage and say, well, it says that our father, so somehow we've been adopted, will not save us in the end. But that doesn't square with the rest of the Bible. So when you read the phrase, forgive us our debts, you're reading the family prayer. God is our father, the judge in the courtroom is over. Christ is the one who stands in our stead. He was rejected. He was cast out. That we might be adopted into the family of God. We are asking the Lord as Father to wipe away those things, those clouds that stand between us because of our sin relationally. That we might know His peace. That we might know in our conscience that the Father is, if you will allow it, smiling on us again. And when you read this phrase, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, remember these four things. It's not because. You never get something from God because you in your own strength have done it. This is a description of who we are. Thirdly, it's a pattern. We do it just like our Father has done it. But he does it better and more completely. And lastly, when you read this threat, if you don't forgive men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive you. I think it's best for us to understand this in the context of the relational knowledge of right relationship with God, not of a loss of salvation. You see what I'm saying when I say that the Lord gives us, in these few brief phrases, rich theology. At first glance, some of these things make complete sense. And then, at other glances, some of them seem to be difficult. Forgive us our debts. Brothers and sisters, this entire week, you have the opportunity to go to your Father. who has already declared over you in His Son the verdict of righteous. That you stand in His presence forever, now and for all time in the Son. There is never going to be a moment when the Son of God will allow you to know the wrath of God Because He has taken it. There is no better lamb. There is no better sacrifice. So this week when you pray, forgive us our debts. Don't cower as if at any moment the Lord will wipe it all out and say, you know what, forget it. You're an orphan to me. No. You pray, Father. Once again, I've sinned. I haven't honored you. I've forsaken you, your law, your promises to me, your truth. I've said to my father that what he has said is a lie. So would you forgive me? Would you show me your countenance again? Would you wipe this away? May this not be between us relationally. And when you pray this week, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Keep in mind, The Lord has already declared over you that you're going to be a person who gets to forgive the family. And one of the many descriptions of you between now and when Christ returns, or you die and go to be with Him, is that you're going to be growing and looking like your Father. One who forgives. Forgive us our debts. as we forgive our debtors. Let's pray. Almighty God, help us to be those that readily come into the presence of our Father and pray the prayer of a child who fully trusts the Father has His best. that never doubts that he is a member of the household when he prays. Lord, when we find ourselves doubting, help us to remember that the Lord's prayer is not a plea for re-justification. But it's the firm and confident cry of the child still wrestling with sin, asking that our Father would once again shine His countenance upon us. Give us the peace of right conscience and the knowing of His presence again. Lord, may we be a people that regularly forgive those in the family. A forgiving people. who lay aside bitterness and grudges and hatred because of who our God is. We pray this in the name of our Savior and in the one in whom we stand, in Christ alone. Amen.