All right. Well, our year-long trip through the Catechism is coming to a close tonight. And it's been a long trip. It's been, I hope, productive and fruitful. But we are going to consider tonight the last installment on the Lord's Prayer. And we'll be looking at Catechism questions 113 to 115. So I invite you to take your catechisms and turn to question 113, and then also take your Bibles and turn to Matthew 6, specifically verse 12. I've entitled the message tonight, The Mirror, Mallet, and Magnet in Our Prayers. Once again, the mirror, the mallet, and the magnet in our prayers. Preachers have a fixation on alliteration, and it's a problem. Pray for me. But anyway, this is our last installment. As I said in the Lord's Prayer, we're going to consider how to think and pray for forgiveness, how to pray against temptation and yet harness it and to pray for the glory of God. So as always, there are three points. And here's the first one, the mirror of forgiveness. The mirror of forgiveness. So let's look at question 113 in our catechisms. The catechist asks, what do we pray for in the fifth petition? And we answer, 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 rather encouraged to ask, because of His grace, we are enabled from the heart to forgive others. How many perfectly forgive? Anybody? I'm a model of what not to do, okay? Forgiveness is hard, right? Forgiveness is really, really hard. Have you ever asked yourself the question, why is forgiveness so hard? You know, there's a whole spectrum of things that we are throughout our life, throughout our weeks, throughout our years confronted with or challenged to forgive. Some things are quite easy, you know, an offhanded comment that was made, a look, a feeling of inferiority, whatever the case may be. And some of those things are, at least on the surface, easier to forgive. And then there's other things I could tell you. I won't go through all exhaustive detail, but some of the cases that have come before me in the counseling office as a pastor and even not as a pastor, but just as a Christian trying to help other Christians work through things, issues of marital infidelity. That is incredibly difficult to grant forgiveness to a cheating spouse. sexual abuse, especially when that abuse is against one of your children. Very, very difficult to grant forgiveness. But the trick with Christians is that by virtue of being a Christian, we have received something that has given us the ability and I would also say should give us the desire to forgive people. And what that thing is, is the gospel. And I want you to notice in this petition, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That word as functions as a mirror. That word as functions as a mirror in how forgiveness is granted, look at the phrase and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. You could switch it and it would be the same. The idea is this, as we have received forgiveness from you, in the multitude of sins and transgressions, sins of omission and sins of commission. As we have received forgiveness from you of that mountain of debt, help us to have clear enough eyes and enough clarity to see and enough rationality, spiritual rationality to see that the things that we are confronted with, that we are to grant forgiveness to, or if I could use this word, chump change, compared to what we've had forgiven us in Jesus Christ. And so when we think about forgiveness, this word as functions as a mirror. Help me to be clear minded enough to know that I have no right. I have no right to decline forgiveness if somebody has asked it, and that's a key that we're going to get to in a moment. based on what God has done for me. And we see this in Matthew 18. I'm not going to ask you to turn there. But in 23 through 35, remember that parable of the ungrateful servant? He gets brought before the king. He owes him in our day, comparatively, millions of dollars. And he begs and pleads and probably sheds tears and asks the king, please forgive him because he doesn't have it. And guess what the king does? He pardons him. And then that servant goes back and he goes to his servant who owes him maybe $3,000 and berates him and even starts choking him and saying, pay what you owe. Why was Jesus telling that parable? Because this guy clearly did not connect what he had received with what he should have given. And so forgiveness in the Christian life functions as a mirror. We forgive as the Lord has forgiven us. And if you think about it, it's liberating and forgiveness. You see yourself for who you really are. Now let that sink in for a moment. Oftentimes I hear this word myopic and myopic. Does anybody know what myopic means? It means that you, you don't, you don't see the full picture. You're kind of like a horse with blinders on, right? You only see straight ahead. But in the case of humans, what it is is we see all the offenses of what somebody has done against us, but we don't see what we have done against others. We don't even see what we've done against them. I was very grateful for the very pastoral way in which this morning Chaplain Pastor Reverend Gillum, Dr. Gillum, explained to us that it's so easy for us to see the faults of others, but we often don't see our own faults. And here's the thing, I would grant to many of us in many of the conflicts that we have that we may be in the right in many of those circumstances, but the last thing in the world that we should do is assume that even in approaching our brothers and sisters to take out the speck in their eye, that we do that perfectly. Because the fact of the matter is we don't do that perfectly, right? We could be offensive, we could be abrasive, we can move too fast, we can move too slow. There's a whole litany of ways in which we can misstep in the process of asking for forgiveness. And furthermore, Furthermore, there's other ways in which we could have offended them. And we need to be non-myopic enough, non-myopic enough, to see where we have offended. And so oftentimes when I ask for somebody for forgiveness, I'll ask them, even in the process of seeking forgiveness, is there any way in which I've offended you? I'll ask them that because I think it's an important question. But let me just lay out for you, if I can, very practically, What others have put together, it's the seven A's of forgiveness, or seven A's of confession, okay? So things to do and things to avoid when you're confessing sin and asking for forgiveness, okay? So the seven A's of forgiveness. Number one, address everyone involved. Address everyone involved. Sometimes, again, we myopically think that we offended one person in a particular way, but it didn't have rippling effects in that person's world or even in our world. I'll give you an example. If somebody commits adultery against their spouse and the Lord gives them a heart of repentance and they go and ask forgiveness from that spouse, do they also need to ask forgiveness from their children? What do you guys think? Why? Very much so you've impacted their lives. And it's myopic to say, well, my offense was only directly against them. You're thinking very literally, you're thinking very pharisaically, you're thinking very legalistically. But you're not taking into consideration the effect, the reverberation of your sins that they've had in the lives of others. So address everyone involved. Secondly, avoid if, but, and maybe. In other words, don't try to excuse your wrongs. Oftentimes when we grant forgiveness, we take the posture of a lawyer. And we're, yeah, we'll grant where we messed up, but then we're gonna go on and give a list of all the things that you did wrong. That has disingenuineness written all over it. The whole idea of extending forgiveness and asking for forgiveness is humility. It's recognizing the ways in which you have wronged them and recognizing that that's the topic of discussion at that point. So avoiding if, but, and maybe. Thirdly, admit specifically both attitudes and actions. Oftentimes, we can be very vague and very general about our sins. And the fact of the matter is, and I see this in dealing with my wife and dealing with my children and dealing with others close to me, it's important that the people that you're confessing your sin to hear from you that you recognize specifically how you have offended them. Okay, number four, acknowledge the hurt. Acknowledge the hurt, express sorrow for hurting someone. This is a huge one, and this is one that I oftentimes see missing in many transactions of forgiveness. Another way you could say it is having empathy. This is what I was trying to get at two Sundays ago, entering into the hurt, not just recognizing the offense itself, but recognizing the effects emotionally, psychologically that it had in their life and relaying back to them. I know that this hurt you in specific ways. I know that if I put myself in your shoes, I can understand how my actions hurt you in this way, in that way, in the other. Number five, accept the consequences. except the consequences. Sometimes people think forgiveness is like this magic wand and it makes the consequences go away. You know, one of the way the way the Lord brought me to himself at 18 years old is I was I was arrested for evasion of officer and drunk driving and I was thrown in the drunk tank and the Lord converted me there. I confess my sins to him, believed in Jesus Christ. But I knew coming out of there that the consequences of my action were not going to go away. I knew that I was probably going to lose my license for a year, and I didn't fight against that. I didn't try to use the gospel card in the civil courts and say, well, I'm a Christian now, so that changes everything. No, you've got to own up to your actions. So accept the consequence. Number six, alter your behavior. This is probably the most important thing. And here we just hear John the Baptist saying, bear fruit in keeping with what? Repentance. Repentance is not a magical wand that you just say, well, I repented, so everything's fine now. Well, we'll see, won't we? Time will tell. Oftentimes, when I was young, I'd go to Christian camps, and there was always that culminating night on Friday where people would get right with Jesus, right? And they'd throw their pine cones into the fire and representing their old sins and stuff like that, and that's great. I'm not ripping on that. But, you know, oftentimes I'd see some of these kids do it. And I think I was even one of them in those early years. And then, man, they got back, you know, from camp and it was business as usual, just the same old thing. So time will tell if your repentance is real. And then finally, number seven, ask for forgiveness. So those are seven days of confession and forgiveness that are important. More could be said about them. But let me just briefly under this head address three common myths that come up when working through forgiveness. OK, so myth number one, you have to forgive people who have offended you, even if they don't ask for your forgiveness. Well, I've already told you what I think about that, but do we have to grant forgiveness to people if they don't ask for forgiveness? Any thoughts? You do? Right. So did God grant us forgiveness in Jesus Christ? Yes. What needed to happen for that to take place? repentance, confession of sin, and faith. In other words, we don't say that God forgives everybody despite their attitude toward their sin and their attitude of faith toward Jesus Christ. So if the gospel, again, is the mirror for my transactions of forgiveness with other people, then that means that those other people need to ask for forgiveness in order for me to grant it. Now, what are the pitfalls of this? The pitfalls or the potential dangers is that you can say to yourself, well, they haven't asked forgiveness from me, so I can continue to be bitter and angry at them and murder them in my heart. Okay, but that's obviously not the case either, right? So oftentimes people cast it in this way. There's a difference between a disposition of forgiveness and a transaction of forgiveness. A disposition of forgiveness says this, and this is what Jesus teaches us. I do not have a right to grow bitter and angry and murder my brother or sister in my heart because they haven't asked for forgiveness and because they've offended me. I can't go down that road. But that's separate from actually granting forgiveness, which happens in the transaction of forgiveness, which is precipitated by them asking for forgiveness. So you see the balance that you have to have? You can't grow bitter toward them, but you need to seek reconciliation. So that's the difference between a disposition and a transaction of forgiveness. Now, myth number two. If I don't feel like forgiving someone, then I don't have to because to do so would be hypocritical. Now, is there some truth to that? I mean, I don't want to be a hypocrite, right? OK, but how many of you, when you get up in the morning, if you read your Bible and pray, don't always feel like reading your Bible and praying? OK, but are you a hypocrite if you do it? Well, no, you're not a hypocrite. What are you trying to do? You're trying to discipline yourself, as Paul says in first Corinthians. I, I buffet my body. I discipline myself so as to not disqualify myself. And I'll never forget Joel Beakey saying this. It was kind of weird the first time I heard it, but he's like, oftentimes in prayer, you have to become, don't take this the wrong way, you have to become something of a Pharisee that just disciplines yourself to do it, even if you don't want to do it. You're saying to your emotions, of course, emotions, I know flesh that you don't want to do this, but I know what's better for you. Just like when I tell my children, no, you can't have popcorn for dinner. You're going to have some protein in this meat that you have to eat. Okay. And I know better than you. Well, you know better than your flesh oftentimes when your flesh doesn't want to forgive or your flesh doesn't want to read your Bible or pray. So we need to be very careful about feelings driving the appropriateness of our granting of forgiveness. Feelings will follow when the truth leads the way. Myth number three, every sin must be confessed. including when I'm murdering somebody in my heart over bitterness and anger. So if I have had hatred or anger or something toward my brother or sister, but it has not expressed itself in a tangible way, do I need to ask them for forgiveness? What do you guys think? Not necessarily, and it's even possible that that could actually be more damaging than helpful, right? I mean, you could blow somebody out of left field, or out of the water, mixing metaphors here, by telling them, hey, you know, I've been hating you in my heart, okay? Proverbs 19.11 says, good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. Peter says it this way, love covers a multitude of sins. At the end of the day, we need to choose our battles, right? And when it comes to offenses, we need to ask ourselves, is this something I can overlook? Which, by the way, the Proverbs describe as a glory, a glorious thing, a beautiful thing. Or is it something that I can't get out of my mind and my heart? It's plaguing me every single day. I have to do something about it. And if it's the latter, then yes, you need to do something about it. And I don't think it means that there's never a case or a scenario where you've been brooding in your heart in a hateful manner toward your brother or sister when you can't go tell them. I think there's a time for that. But I think what you need to ask yourself is, is it so consuming me that it's actually causing me to stumble and causing me to sin. Psalm 119, 165 says this, and I have to remind myself of this constantly when I deal with people who I think have offended me. Great peace have those who love your law. Nothing can make them stumble. That's powerful. You know what I often do when somebody says something to me that I think, who do they think they are, as Pastor Joe was saying this morning, or what are they thinking? I always try, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, to love believes all things and hopes all things. So I want to try as far as is possible to put the best construction on what it is they said and assume the best. Now there comes a point where you're assuming of the best runs out and you can't assume the best anymore because they have given you ample evidence to think the opposite. And in those cases you need to address it. But it is a glory, it is a glory to be able to be patient with them and know that everybody's in different stages in their sanctification and just have grace with them. So that is the mirror of forgiveness. Let's move on secondly to the mallet of temptation. Let's look at question 114. Question 114 says, what do we pray for in the sixth petition? And we answer, in the sixth petition, which is, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil, we pray that God would either keep us from being tempted to sin or support and deliver us when we are tempted. So I want you to think of temptation as a mallet in God's hand to refine and discipline us. And let me just give a quick technical note on this whole concept of temptation. According to James, God never tempts believers, but he does test them. But the difficulty is that in the Greek language, the word for test and tempt are the exact same word. So it's difficult oftentimes to tease out which is being referenced, but we do that by context, okay? So even in the Greek Old Testament, Genesis 22.1, it says that when God called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, He was testing him. He was testing to see what was in his heart. And so sometimes it's hard for us to see which one it is, especially because God's providence is so mysterious, right? So we don't know if any given temptation that's coming our way is coming from the world, the flesh, and the devil, or if it's coming from God, or maybe they're in some way intertwined. God has a purpose in it, and the world, the flesh, and the devil has an alternative purpose in it. But as James says in James 1, 2-3, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various kinds of trials, or trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. But then he goes on to say in 13 to 17, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. So we need to separate God's testing us from temptation, and temptation comes from the three-headed enemy of the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world is outside of us, the flesh is the enemy within us, and the devil is the enemy among us. So when we are asking, that we would not be led into temptation. We're asking that the Spirit would help us. And this is why Jesus calls the Spirit the helper. We need the helper or the counselor to get us through this. Let me give you three suggestions for dealing with temptation, okay? Number one, trust the Spirit, not yourself. In other words, err on the side of caution. There was a story of a man, and he was trying to hire a chauffeur, a driver, to drive his daughter to school. But they lived on the top of a mountain, and that meant that the driver had to navigate these very narrow roads that went around the mountain. And as he was interviewing the many drivers, he asked them, how close can you drive to the edge without falling off? And the first one said, oh, well, I could drive a foot without falling off. And the next one said, well, I could drive six inches. And the third one said three inches. And the fourth one said one inch. And then the last man said, I wouldn't even know because I will be hugging the other side of the road so close so as to keep your daughter from falling off the cliff. And that is a perfect example of what our orientation toward temptation should be. We should not assume that we are stronger than we are. We need, as Paul says, to have a sober estimation of ourself. And so in the context of praying that the Lord would keep us from temptation, We should not be that double-minded man or woman that upon asking for such a prayer request opens our eyes and puts ourselves in the line of fire where that temptation is. Our actions that follow from our prayer requests should follow with consistency. So if you struggle with pornography, for example, and you're praying that the Lord would keep you from temptation, then not only do you need to be careful about where you go on the internet, but you need to ask for accountability from brothers and sisters. You need to get some type of filter on your computer. You need to follow through in your actions with your prayer requests. So we need to have humility and a reality check in dealing with temptation. Second, Make use of the word of God to fight temptation. Remember when Jesus was tempted in the desert or in the wilderness? Every time Satan tempted him, he shot back with what? He shot back with Scripture. And Jesus was not just spouting platitudes, religious platitudes. Jesus really believed in the power of Scripture. Oftentimes when I'm counseling people, I'll, I'll open the Bible and I won't read it for them. I will have them read it. And I learned this from my, uh, from my, um, mentor. And at first I just thought, what's the big deal? Whether you read it or they read it, because these words have power. If we really believe second Timothy three 16, that all scriptures inspired and profitable for the man of God, et cetera, et cetera. If we really believed that, then there would be a weight and a gravitas to Scripture when it comes off our lips, and when it comes off the lips of our brothers and sisters. The Word of God is powerful, and we need to utilize it in our fight against temptation. It's not using the world's platitudes, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, buck up, you can do this. No, you can't do this. You're a miserable worm of a sinner and you need the Spirit. You need the Word of God and the Spirit of God. Remind me of a story of a blacksmith This blacksmith was in his shop and he was beating heavily on this glowing metal with this huge hammer. And he was beating upon this anvil. And this little boy, he heard it, and he's like, he turned to his father, and he says, Father, what is that? And he said, come here, I'll show you, son. And they go into the shop, and he showed him the blacksmith, and he showed him the hammer, huge hammer with a big handle. And every time that blacksmith came down on that glowing metal, the boy would jump, he would jump. And the boy looked at the blacksmith, and he said, aren't you going to break that thing? And he was referring to the anvil. He said, oh boy, this anvil is a hundred years old. It has worn out many hammers. It will not break. The Bible is ancient. Unbelievers have been hammering on it for millennia, and it has never been broken. Satan has been hammering on it for thousands of years and it has never been broken. The death of saints has not broken it. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. The Bible wears out 1,000 hammers because the Bible points us to Jesus, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. His Word is solid. His Word is strong. And when you lean on that, You get the strength that you need to say no to sin and be victorious in the midst of temptation. This is why groups like Navigators, and I would just say Christians, think it's a really good idea to memorize scripture. Your word I have hidden in my heart that I may not what? Sin against you. Do you have that gravitas in your estimation of God's word? Is it just something that we do on Sunday morning? Or do you take it as the sword that it is and to work with you for that boss that hates you? Do you take it into marital conflicts? Do you take it into conflict with brothers and sisters, and do you see it as the God-given solution for conflict? I hope you do. Number three, and finally under this head, rejoice in the process of temptation. The Holy Spirit teaches us to glorify God in temptation. James says, count it all joy, which at first glance seems very weird for James to say that. As Pastor Joe was saying this morning, I love so many things that he said, but, you know, iron sharpens iron, and so one brother sharpens the countenance of another brother. Growth comes through conflict, right? Growth comes through temptation. Growth comes through trial. And as I've often said, Many times when I'm confronted with trial, even though I am downcast by it, I'm discouraged by it, there's also a part of me that the Lord has allowed me to be able to see that says, I'm a little expectant to see what the Lord's gonna do in me. I mean, how am I gonna grow in this? How am I gonna be more gracious to my brother and my sister who I think are just totally missing the boat on this? The Lord's gonna do something. The Lord is doing something in me. He's doing something in you right now. And as we resist our foes, as we resist temptation, we draw closer to God, we learn to glorify Him. John Bunyan said this, God's people are like bells. The harder they're hit, the better they sound. Finally, number three, glory as the magnet of our prayers. Glory as the magnet of our prayers. Look finally at Catechism question number 115. What does the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer teach us? And the answer is, the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, which is, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen, teaches us to take our encouragement in prayer from God only. and in our prayers to praise Him, ascribing kingdom, power, and glory to Him. And in testimony of our desire and assurance to be heard, we say, Amen. The coming of Christ's kingdom is the magnet, as it were, that pulls us through all of life's trials. He will take us to glory, perfect body, heaven, soul, etc. For yours is the kingdom, power, and glory forever. Amen. In other words, the secret to overcoming temptation is the realization that you don't live for yourself, but you live for someone else. That you don't live for this world and this kingdom, but you live for another world and another kingdom. and that someone else is God and that other kingdom is the eschatological new heavens and new earth that I hope you get excited about when you read the book of Revelation and you read Isaiah, that lyrical prophet who paints it with such beautiful hues that it could lift you right out of a trial and help you feed upon the manna of heaven as it comes to you in vivid description in HD in the word of God. Don't receive these six petitions for me, we say to the Lord. Rather, receive them for your sake and your glory. Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. If we fall to temptation, Satan will appear stronger than you. His kingdom will appear stronger than yours. His glory will seem more than yours. Oh Lord, let me not sin, we say. The kingdom, the power, the glory is yours. Yours is the kingdom. The kingdom of power and grace is all yours. You are victorious over all things. So how do we get this victory over temptation? We go to Him. We lean on Him. We depend on Him. He is in charge. He rules. All things are His. His is the kingdom. All our power is wrapped up in His power. You couldn't do anything with Him, so let us go to Him. We pray for the glory of God. We want our life to be a transcript of his kingdom, power and glory. And that's why we say yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory. The king we serve is worthy of our obedience. And so every time that we sin, we act as if we are a part of the kingdom of Satan, the very thing against which we are praying. We end with a man because it means firmness. It literally comes from a Hebrew term that is also used in other parts of the Hebrew scripture for pillars of the temple. It is a pillar that bears the weight, and so our amens bear the weight of what God has promised to us. We are saying, verily, truly, may it be so. Jesus used this term, and actually Jesus is the amen of God. We are praying, may it be most certainly so it cannot fail because Jesus is the amen of God in Christ. Everything that needed to be done by God was done. That is why Christ is the amen. That's why Paul calls him the amen in Christ. There is full and free salvation. God's amen is Christ himself to tell us die, he says on the cross. It is finished. So Christ. God's Son with us is Christmas, His Son for us is His Passion and Resurrection, His Son over us is Ascension, and His Son in us is Pentecost. All of God's promises are wrapped up in the Amen of Jesus Christ. And so we say Amen to God by faith, And in so doing, we covenant our whole life to Him. We pray with specific power and in the certainty of the gospel. So when we're saying amen, we're saying, Father, this is my desire. We unconditionally rest in the will of God. We trust in the Lord that His will will stand. We subject ourselves to His kingdom and His power and His glory. We amen the ways of the Most High. We yield wholehearted trust. We affirm faithfulness in God and we trust Him. When we say amen, we are saying this is my prayer, my conviction, my confession of sin. I want to give reverence to your name. I want all these things in these petitions. I need these things and I trust you for it. God gets all the glory. He increases and I decrease. So are you amening God this evening? Are you seeing in your amens the person and work of Christ, the only one who could save us from the rat race of legalism and the subjectivity of antinomianism? Jesus Christ is the answer to all man's perils, and you can have all that he gives us by his person and work, by repenting of our sins and placing your faith in him. Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for your son, Jesus Christ. We pray that you would give us more of him, that our desire for him would be increased, our affection for him would be flamed, and that, Father, we would die to sin, we would kill it, we would be hostile toward it and not toward you, hostile toward temptation and not toward our brothers and sisters. Give us peace in this community, Father. Give us grace. Give us a willingness and a desire to forgive offenses against us, just as you have forgiven us in Christ. We ask all these things in your son's name. Amen. You are dismissed.