Hello and welcome to this week's service at Westminster Reformed Presbyterian Church. We are located out of Prairie View, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. We are so glad you decided to join us today. This is our next sermon in the series on the Lord's Prayer by Pastor Brett Malin. Our scripture readings will be Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34, and John 1, 1. Our sermon text will be Matthew 6, 9 through 13. Have you ever written a poem? Have you ever actually sought to put your feelings, to put your hopes, your dreams into a poem? Not as a result of an assignment that you were given, but have you ever really sought to pour your heart out on paper? so that you can get your thoughts out. So you might put them in sort of a rhythm and rhyme. Oftentimes people who write poetry, they do it for personal reasons. They're seeking to do something with it. They're seeking to moderate their thoughts and their emotions and see what they really think. Very rarely do people seek to make their poetry public. Sometimes, certainly, there are those who are poets who become public, and rare is it for someone to actually become paid for their poetry. Usually, when people write poetry, it's not really discovered until they're long gone, just how good it was. Poetry is personal, though, more often than not. Let me ask you this. Would you ever write a poem and write it about your greatest failure and then put it out there for the whole entire world to see? I trust that ordinarily, and under ordinary circumstances, you would not do that. I want to put out there for you. I would like to lay before you that that is exactly what David has done in Psalm 51. In Psalm 51, you must understand David is a believer. He has been a believer for years. He has walked with God, his savior. And then certain things went to his head. Kingship. The privileges of kingship seem to have gone to his head. The fact that no one in his presence would tell him no went to his head. And he forgets that he is accountable to God. And so he orchestrates. the murder of a man, Uriah the Hittite. Why does he do that? He does that because he had been committing adultery with this man's wife. And, of course, ultimately this results in pregnancy. This is a tragic, tragic figure. One who walks on the mountain, in a sense, walks in the heavenly Zion with God to fall so far. He gives us Psalm 51, and Psalm 51 becomes this prayer, this poem, this song that is so powerful to us. Why? Why is it so powerful? Because ultimately, it's not just his. It is probably the place where we go most when we have sinned against our God. And God, in a sense, places these words into our mouths when we pray this prayer along with David. We have a sense of a need for cleansing. Verse two, among others, similar verses in it, say things like this. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. David is crying out for a savior. And that is what we do when we realize that we have sinned against our best friend, we have sinned against the Savior, the Lord Jesus, we have sinned against our Father in heaven. We go and we say, wash me, cleanse me. What David is crying out for in redemptive history centuries before the Savior will come upon the scene. He is crying out for a sin-bearing Savior. He knows that he is a blood-washed pilgrim and that he needs the Savior to come into this world and manifest the Father's glory, and that is what the Lord Jesus does. That is why the Lord Jesus comes into this world so that he might be a sin-bearing substitute for you and me so that we might be washed and that we might be cleansed. The mission of the Lord Jesus was not only to prophesy, though it was that, The mission of the Lord Jesus was not only to do signs and wonders, though he did that, it was not only to preach and declare the kingdom of God, though it was that. The primary mission of the Savior was to be mistreated by man and, in a sense, to be abandoned by God upon the cross. and to hang between heaven and earth, rejected by heaven and rejected by earth. He did this so that he might wash and cleanse a church, that he might cleanse his bride. But in the midst of this, and on the way to Jerusalem to suffer, he does teach, teaches his disciples how to pray. And in the midst of that, he teaches them this, which we call the Lord's Prayer. Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. Having meditated upon this, this portion, having recited it, In the catechism, he would say, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. For those who are visitors among us, understand we've been preaching just one portion of the Lord's Prayer at a time each Lord's Day for the last couple of weeks. Why? The reason is because prayer is very, very important. I would say that it is something that we don't teach and we don't teach well enough and we don't teach it often enough and therefore prayer is often neglected in the Christian life because people are afraid or they try it and they feel like they failed. We need models for prayer. Well, here has the Lord Jesus given us a model I do hope and I do pray that there are no prayerless Christians among us, that there are prayerless Christians among us, and I encourage you to take this prayer, open it up in the Bible, open it up in the catechism, and pray that God's name would be glorified, that his will would be done in the earth, that the kingdom would continue to to advance. Pray for your daily bread, as we talked about last week. That implies getting up and praying this before the daily bread is laid before you. Not waiting to pray at the end of the day, of course. Give me today my daily bread when you've already partaken of it two, three, four, five times already. But what of this, the continuing need to pray for the forgiveness of sins? You must continue to pray for the forgiveness of sins. I have three reasons for that. You must pray for the forgiveness of your sins or of your debts. Let me just give you those three reasons because God has a righteous standard. Because God has a righteous standard. Two, because you continue to sin. And also we would say you must pray for God to forgive your debts and you must forgive others. Let those be headlines if you like or outline. You must pray for for God to forgive your debts. Why? Because God has a perfect righteous standard. God has a standard. In this day and age we see so many standards that are lowering. Standards are becoming lower and lower all around us. Moral standards. educational standards. All around us these things are plummeting. But a society cannot function without some sorts of standards. When we talk about how many degrees it is, the temperature, well think about that. That implies that there is a standard. I say it's 70 degrees or 50 degrees. That assumes that there's a standard that we all understand. Even talk about the weather needs such a standard. Here's the thing. God has not allowed us to come up with a moral standard which is good enough for us and which is agreed upon by our whole society. Moral standards are not something that society decides upon. We do decide whether we're going to go Fahrenheit or Celsius. He leaves us that liberty. Moral standards, that is not the case. God's perfect, righteous standard is the Ten Commandments. If we had chosen these standards for ourselves, we would have chosen other ones. or we would have chosen ones that were not so severe. If I could have chosen standards for myself, the standards would make me look good and everyone else not so good. And I trust that the same is the case with you. The thing about God's perfect standard in the Ten Commandments is that each one of us have broken each one of these ten commandments. And that is the standard by which we measure ourselves and we have a perfect zero out of ten. The standard does not depend on your feelings. You must understand that, especially in this age. this age in which people believe that something is right or wrong, people believe that something is true or false based on whether they feel good about it or don't feel good about it. And this kind of thing has worked its way even into the church so that many Christians do not understand the standards that God has given and they have invented their own standards based upon feeling. They do not think about guilt or innocence. They emote. They feel certain things and they use feeling as a barometer of right and wrong and of true and false. When it comes to this standard, God helps us to see that we need to turn from our sin and that we need to trust in God. Because of the fact that our society, as messed up as it is, because of our society and the situation that it finds itself finds itself oftentimes declaring the guilty to be innocent, and it declares the innocent to be guilty. It's really remarkable when you think about it. There are some people in our society who are somehow guilty of things that they didn't but they are guilty of things their ancestors did. And the same people who would declare this also refuse to see that they are guilty of many things that they have actually done. You see that this manifests itself in the same people? You're guilty for what your ancestors did, and they are not guilty But what they have done, we must be very careful when we accuse. Do you see that? Do you see how mixed up this world is? How desperately it needs God's perfect standards. For here it is calling evil good and good evil. It's calling the guilty innocent and the innocent guilty. It's basing truth and it's basing morality upon feeling. You see how our society is truly the blind leading the blind. It is those in a dark room leading those also in a dark room. How the world needs the gospel, but it rejects the gospel. How the church needs the gospel, How much so? The church needs the perfect law of God as its standard. Let me just tell you that when it comes to this perfect standard, God's perfect standard of righteousness, I, in principle, refuse to repent of sin that I have not committed. That might sound obvious, but it's not so obvious in our day. I'd encourage you to see it that way, too. Refuse to repent of sin that you have not committed. I have enough to repent of that I've actually done, that I've actually committed. How would I go on to repent of sin that I have not committed. I'm not proclaiming my own righteousness here, neither should you be. There are some times when you're in a relationship with someone, and they impute something to you. You didn't do it, and you think, well, you know, for the sake of peace, I'll just apologize, and we can just move on. Not at all. That is to assume that there's not a perfect righteous standard. It's often joked about, even. Jokes men talk about, eh, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? Well, it's cute, it's funny, we laugh at such things, but what's at the heart of that? Maybe it might be the idea that I will confess sins that I've not committed. I've committed errors, or I'll confess errors that I've not committed for the sake of peace. Do you understand how misunderstood that is? There's a perfect righteous standard. That perfect righteous standard shows my guilt and shows yours as well. Turn from your sin. Repent of your sin. There's only one sin that I will repent of that I did not commit and that's Adam's first sin. That's it. Because we're guilty of Adam's first sin. Now keep this in mind. We're not guilty of all of Adam's sin. Again, I've got enough of my own. It's just his first one. All the rest is his for him to repent of. You ever been in a situation in which Christians are asked to recite the Lord's Prayer? You ever been in a situation where that happens and everybody says, Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, et cetera, et cetera. You ever been in that situation where people are of different Christian groups, you might have some in the Romanesque at Capus Camp, and you might have some Anglicans among you. You ever notice what happens? I have. Oftentimes you get to this part. You get to this verse, right? And you say, forgive us our debts. And then, this is my experience, maybe it's yours, you have to wait for everybody else to say, transgressions. Maybe it's only me. As we forgive our debtors. And everybody else has to. It's interesting that this has been translated a couple of different ways. I would argue for debtors. Transgressors is not wrong per se. But debtors. Our debts. Forgive us our debts. we forgive our debtors. What that means is that sin brings about a debt between you and God outside of Christ that is an infinite debt. Those who sin against us have committed a debt against us and they need to do something about it. A transgression is not wrong, or a trespass is not wrong. What do both of these words imply? Well, debt means that you owe something. But sin as trespass or transgressions, what that implies there is that you've entered into a place that is not yours. You've entered into something you ought not to have entered in. That is certainly the case with our sin. It both brings debt to us, but it also causes us to enter into realms that we ought not, into places which are terrible and which are dangerous for us. Sin is certainly a debt, but it is also a trespass or a transgression. Even the version that I'm reading from In verse 12 it says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And then you just go to the 14th verse. For if we forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your father forgive your trespasses. Sin. His debt in 12 and 14 and 15 is transgressing or trespassing. You must pray for God to forgive your debts because God has a righteous standard, but also because you continue to sin. The promise of the new covenant According to Jeremiah 31 31, what's that? Sin would be forgiven in the new covenant. I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. The promise of the new covenant is that Jesus Christ suffers upon the cross and that he bleeds for you. and that he rises again from dead for you so that the work of the Savior, his perfect suffering and his covering over your debts will reach forward 2,000 years and cover over your transgressions. And if we believe that, And it's easy to see that the suffering of Christ and the resurrection of Christ, which reaches forward to you 2,000 years, also reaches back to David 11 centuries or so, and to all of the old covenant saints. Beauty of the new covenant. is that it reaches forward and backward and forgives the sins of the people of God both old covenant and new. Forgiveness of sin is initial in the Christian life. We come to God finally convinced of our sin and We confess our sins to God and we place our faith in Jesus Christ. We enter into a faith union with Jesus Christ and our sins are forgiven. The gospel is that we are united to Christ. The gospel is that we receive Christ and that we have Christ. The gospel is our union with him and his death, his burial, and his resurrection. And the gospel is and encompasses our justification, that once for all declaration that we are righteous in his sight. Not for anything that we've done, but by his mercy. The gospel is and encompasses the fact that we are adopted into the kingdom of God and to the family of God. And the gospel is and encompasses the fact that Jesus sanctifies us by his Holy Spirit. While all of these things are true, we are declared righteous, we are declared to be sons and daughters. There is ongoing sin in the life of the children of God. David confesses it as if he didn't confess it enough. In Psalm chapter 51, he tells us in 40, 12, for innumerable evils have surrounded me. Stop right there. You think, oh, he's going to talk about his enemies. gonna talk about the bad guys. Now, he's not talking about the bad guys without, he's talking about that which is within. He says, my iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up. They are more than the hairs of my head, therefore my heart fails me. Well, how are we to take this? Here is David, who's declared righteous, confessing his sin and saying basically his sin is this insurmountable enemy against him. Does David go from salvation to loss of salvation to gaining it back again by confession, losing it by sin, gaining it back again by confession? Not at all. It's not what is implied by this at all. David would not be found out that he would be doing this. It's kind of our thing. David would not be like someone holding a daisy and saying, God loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me. That's not the case with God. Once we are united to Christ, we are in a relationship with God. that cannot be severed. You ask, well, how are we to understand if we have this unsevered, unseverable relationship? Then how is it that we sin so often, and sometimes even seem to have an absence of God's presence, like David talks about. As we think of the Psalms, we come to them, and here we have Sometimes he's exalting God, and other times he's saying, where are you? And other times he's confessing his sin. How are we to make, how are we to even speak of these things? The right way to understand this and the historical understanding of this is simply this, that our union with Christ, our union with God, once we enter into relationship with him, is unsevered and unseverable. It is immutable, it changes not. However, our relationship with God does have highs and it does have lows. And more often than not, the lows are a result of our sins. We would say that our union with Christ is unchanging, but we would say that our communion with Christ ebbs and it flows. It ought to flow, and I wish it would at all times, at all times. When we fall into sin, we have the promise of 1 John 1-9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What we're seeking to say here is this. It's similar to a marriage relationship. Husbands and wives are participants in a marriage union. And that union is unmoving. You are not partially married or partially unmarried. You are either fully married or fully not married. There's no in-between. However, your relationship within that marriage, sometimes it can be close and intimate, sometimes not so much. Obviously, we hope for a close walking, one with another. But ultimately, disagreements do not bring ebbs and flows in the marriage itself. The same is the case with fathers and sons or fathers and daughters. Children sin against their parents. Does that make them not their children? No, it's not. You have a son, you have a daughter. You are a son, you are a daughter. It doesn't matter, that is unchanging. Whether you're walking in your parents' good graces or not. What is similar in a marriage relationship, what is similar in a father-son, father-daughter, Son, and all the rest. Relationship is true of our relationship with God. Unchanging union, but changing communion at times. God, in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 43, backs up and says something similar to what he says in 1 John 1. In Isaiah 43, 25, God says, I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions for my sake, and I will not remember your sins. When we go to the Lord in prayer, understand that we go to the Lord Jesus as well. We go to Jesus, our high priest. We need not go to an earthly priest. Indeed, there is no such thing as an earthly priest. Those who would call themselves priests are not priests. A priest is someone who offers up a sacrifice. That's the job of a priest. Since the Lord Jesus offered himself up as a sin-bearing sacrifice, There's no basis for a priest any longer because there's no more sacrifice. When we go to our Savior, we go to the one with whom we are united and we seek to keep short accounts with him because we have harmed the relationship. We've not severed the relationship. but our sin is still an offense to him. We go to him and we ask forgiveness and we trust that he is willing and able and delights in forgiving our sin. The Christian forgives and is forgiven because the Christian knows that although he is in a right relationship with God, he continues to sin. Sometimes it affects us deep down inside. Sometimes our sin affects us in our soul and in our mind, but sometimes it affects us in our bodies. Psalm 32, which we have sung, says this, When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. Let me read that. I'll read that in the New King James as well. When I kept silence, my bones grew old through my groaning all day long. Here's what David is saying. I spent time sinning against God. United to Him, but sinning against Him, fusing to repent of particular sins, particularly. And he says, I felt it not just in my soul, I felt it in my body. I felt it in my bones and they almost felt like old bones to me. But he goes on to say that eventually he breaks his silence and he speaks to God and confesses his sins and his sins are forgiven. And God, in a sense, provides not just soul healing, but bodily healing for David. We must pray for forgiveness of our debts. Why? Because we continue to sin. But understand that there will be a day in which we will sin no longer, and we will have not only unchanging the union with Christ, but also unchanging communion with Christ. And that will happen at our death, because to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, where Jesus should come sooner. That would be at the new heaven and the new earth. we will no longer sin against our God and our Savior. But in the meantime, we sin against Him. Let me encourage you, if there is sin in your life that you're pushing down, you're trying to keep down, pressing it down like a soccer ball or or the volleyball or the ball underneath the water, it's pressing up. It's pressing up for good reason. Because you need to repent of it. Maybe it is sin that you are hiding from other people. Maybe it is sin that you are hiding from God. Maybe it is sin that you are even hiding from yourself. Let me encourage you. to confess your sin to a merciful, gracious, kind, loving God, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our time has certainly gotten away from us. Let me seek to say very briefly, we must pray for God to forgive our debts, and we must forgive others. This verse is certainly had some caused some consternation and some people forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Now there are some people who will look at that and say oh that means that I must forgive other people and by forgiving other people I gain some sort of standing with God. by forgiving other people, I merit to do things with God by my good works of forgiving other people. Let me just make sure that you understand that that's not what is being said here. What we're not talking about here is that we would go to God and say, I've forgiven other people, therefore you ought to forgive me. I've done my part, now you need to do your part. I've done my meritorious work, now you should forgive me. That's not what's going on here. What it's talking about is really more of a reciprocal relationship we have. What we mean is, we have a habit of forgiving other people. And God has a habit of forgiving us. Indeed, we would say, this is not something that's meritorious, that we would stand before God. No, this is our lifestyle. A lifestyle of confessing our sin to God. A lifestyle of accusing ourselves before God rather than having Him need to accuse us. The lifestyle. of forgetting the things that people have done to us. And when we are unable to forget, to go to them and ask forgiveness. It's not for merit. It is that we might go before God, that we might pray with a clean conscience, that we might not bear the weight of our consternation, frustration, and our anger at other people. So we do forgive those who have sinned against us and those who have asked for forgiveness. Colossians 3, 13 says, forbearing one another and forgiving one another. If any man have a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. In other words, when we have quarrels against others, ultimately say, you know, you need to forgive these things. Especially when the people ask for it. You think God wants you to carry around the anger and the frustration and the burdens. Not only of your own sin, but those who have sinned against you. God desires for you to be free of your own sin. and that we would be free of the sins of others, which cause consternation to you. Well, as we go to the Lord's Prayer, or to the Lord's Suffer here momentarily, let us meditate upon our Savior. Let us meditate upon His glory and His grace. Christian, if you could see what he has stored up for you. If you could see what he has stored up for you, all of your earthly cares would pass away. The Bible tells us no man has seen, no man has heard, has not entered into the the mind earth and to the heart of man what God has prepared for those that love him. If you could see the storehouses that the heavenly Joseph has for you, so many things would pass away. If you could hear Jesus, the heavenly David, which the book of Zephaniah tells us in 3.17, he rejoices over you with joy, and he sings over you. What grace is this? Isn't this amazing? Wouldn't that be awesome if we could hear the heavenly David singing? It'd be awesome to hear the earthly David sing. Can you imagine the author singing these psalms that we sing? How awesome would that be? How much more so the heavenly David, the Lord Jesus? If we could see the earthly Aaron, the earthly high priest, that would be glorious. The Bible tells us that the dress that he was to wear, and the curtains of the tabernacle, and all of the rest, it was for beauty and for glory, it tells us. How much more so, the Lord Jesus, the Savior, who is dressed not in purple, and scarlet, and blue, and fine twined linen, He is robed in righteousness and he is robed in glorious light and heavenly beauty. And he sits upon a throne and he intercedes for you and for me. How glorious it would be to see the earthly Aaron enter into the holy of holies to make atonement for the people. How much more glorious the Lord Jesus, the heavenly Aaron, the heavenly high priest who has entered into heaven to that holy place, to that holy of holies. And he has entered not with the blood of animals, but he has entered with his own blood. And on that, and on that merit, he goes, having prepared a place for you, he goes to make intercession for you, so that when you sin, he intercedes for you, and the Father hears him, as the Bible says in the book of Hebrews, he ever lives to intercede. So this day, as we Listen to the preaching, and as we think of the preaching of the word of God throughout the rest of the day, as we go through the supper, let us consider the heavenly Joseph, the heavenly David, the heavenly Aaron, the heavenly eternal son of God, who clothed himself in human flesh, suffered and was raised for you and for me. Let us acknowledge this kingship and say with the Father in Hebrews chapter 1, Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. Praise God for the Savior, the Lord Jesus. Let us do so now. Thank you for tuning in. Please review our Facebook and YouTube pages for further teachings. We pray you will join us next week. If you are interested in or have questions about visiting us in person, please contact us at secretary at wrbc at gmail.com. Thank you.