No Trespassing
PPT 1 Series Title
PPT 2 Text
Mt 6:9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
Mt 6:10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as [it is] in heaven.
Mt 6:11 Give us this day our daily bread.
Mt 6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Mt 6:13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
PPT 3 Message Title
The introduction to the Lord's prayer in the Gospel of Luke goes this way:
PPT 4 text
Luke 11:1 And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.
Teach me the mechanics of prayer. The proper way to go about it.
Back up, why do you think the disciple asked that question?
The way Jesus prayed moved him. He saw something that was different and powerful in the way Jesus prayed, and he wanted to pray like that.
How did Jesus pray? Is there anything about how he prayed in the bible?
The Lord's prayer is a what prayer, that is, it teaches about the things we should pray for, not the way in which Jesus prayed.
How did Jesus pray? The answer will surprise you:
PPT 5 text
Hebrews 5:7 During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.
He prayed with loud cries and tears. He prayed passionately.
I think that is what motivated the unnamed disciple to say, I want some of that, teach me how to do that.
Yet when asked to teach on prayer, Jesus gave a summarized version of what to pray, not one word on the volume level, or the intensity of prayer. Why? because passion cannot be taught. It has to be birthed inside you.
Kind of like Elisha's prayer to be given me a double portion of Elijah's spirit.
Elijah couldn't give him his prayer life.
His experiences.
His intimate moments in the presence of God.
His hunger, his passion.
Elisha did twice the miracles, but God didn't send His personal limo for him when he died like he did Elijah when Elijah was taken up to heaven. So Elisha had the mechanics the same as Elijah but his personal walk with God never appears to have reached the same levels as Elijah.
Jesus spoke as one who had authority.
He prayed as one who knew God. That cannot be taught, you have to learn that in the privacy of your own personal walk with God.
Jesus gave us a 20 second to do list that is amazingly compact, and yet if we were to fully unpack it we would see that in essence it covers every subject that needs to be covered in prayer.
Last week we talked about the need to pray deliver us from evil.
Prevention is better than the need for treatment.
To be proactive is better than being reactive.
This morning we are going to talk about forgiving trespasses.
There are 3 different words used by translators of this passage:
Some use debts,
Some use sins,
Some use trespasses.
The words all basically mean the same thing as the example of Luke's gospel shows us:
PPT 6 text
Lu 11:4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
Do you see how sins and debts are used interchangeably by him?
The Greek word translated sin is harmatia and it means to miss the mark. Often pastors will use the example of an arrow, but I don't think that gives justice to what Jesus had in mind. Because with the arrow we think of the bullseye, but we could still hit the target somewhere else.
In reality a better example might be a drivers road test, which is pass or fail. To miss the mark, to sin, means not your close but that you failed miserably. This is not horseshoes or hand grenades, it does matter if you are not perfectly on the mark.
This morning I want to use the word trespass, which means to go somewhere you aren't supposed to go, because it will help us with our understanding of forgiveness. Sin in its essence is going somewhere you aren't supposed to go, whether in thought or deed.
Again trespassing is to go someplace, you got no business going.
I heard an interesting slant and take on the verse. It was shared by a pastor's wife, whose church was thriving in every aspect of it's life and ministries. Then someone heard something her husband had done more than a decade earlier, in a different city and a different time in their life. It was something they had put under the blood, he had repented of, had gotten forgiveness of and they had moved on in their lives. The person who found the issue out then did everything in their power to ruin that pastor's position in the church, and the church was nearly destroyed because of their actions, over something that was put under the blood more than a decade earlier.
Now I want you to do is to imagine the wrong he had done as something that we will call a car wreck. I also want you to imagine they lived in Anchorage Alaska when the sin had taken place, but they now lived in Key West Florida. I want you to imagine that forgiveness is like taking your wrecked car to God and to ask Him to bury it in His junkyard. So then the land the junked the car was parked on was owned by his heavenly Father and his Father had taken that junked car and put it so far back on his property no one could possible see it from the roads around his property. Finally the dad had expended care and effort to put up no trespassing signs all around the borders of his property. The bible teaches that God puts our sins are far away from us as East is to West when we repent. (Ps 103:12)
So the only way someone could ever know about that incident was for them to trespass onto someone else's junk lot. So the person in the church who had dug up old sins had trespassed deep into the Father's lot and uncovered something the Father intended to be never brought up again. Not only that, but every person they told what happened also became trespassers on a place they never should have been.
Would you like someone going to your junkyard and bringing up things you asked God to forgive you for? If you want your wrecks hidden far back in God's lot, don't bring up the wrecks of others.
So in essence Jesus is teaching if you want your junk cars left alone, leave their junk cars left alone.
Yet in that short power packed phrase of Jesus it goes much deeper than that one simple thought, He is saying to forgive those who trespassed on your lot and brought out your old junk.
In other words the pastor and his wife were told by God to forgive those people who brought up his old dirt. I don't know about you, but for me, the more someone's action have hurt me the harder it is to forgive them.
I find it a lot easier to put up the no trespassing sign on my junk than to put it up on yours, and most especially to put it on your junk if I find you have been trespassing on my old junk.
Look at this verse in 1 Corinthians 13 where the Apostle Paul is teaching on what love is and how it behaves:
PPT 7 Text
1Co 13:5 It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
It keeps no record of wrongs.
But as humans we tend to keep records like that.
Illustrate with little notebook. Some people carry around with them a little notebook and write down everything others have done wrong. Some people spend their whole lives living in the notebook of the wrongs others have done to them.
Jesus is teaching if you want me to get rid of the notebook I have on you, give Me the notebook you have on others.
It is especially hard to do, while they are still trespassing.
Often people are the least lovable when they need it the most.
God will let you park your junkers on His back lot, but the cost of admission is your notebook against others.
The bible teaches we are not to let the sun go down on our anger, we need to empty our notebooks every day at the feet of Christ, and also ask that He empty the notebook that is written against us.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
One last thought and we will close in prayer.
Sometimes people will say to me I can't forgive them, or I thought I forgave them but it keeps coming up in my mind and spirit what they did to me.
1. Forgiveness is not a feeling. If you forgave them you forgave them. It is gone, in the same way that when you ask Jesus to forgive you He did. If it keeps coming up, it may be the enemy has been rummaging around in the junkyards of life and is trying to throw old dirt on you. Reject that.
2. There is a difference between lack of forgiveness and a hurting wound.
When someone sins against us, in some ways it is like they have opened a gashing wound in us. Forgiveness doesn't remove the wound, though it does aid in the healing process. People often confuse the fact they are hurting to mean they haven't forgiven the other party. The two things are very separate, but wounds that continue to hurt can cause feelings of anger and bitterness to rise in us. A hurting wound has to be treated differently than the sin that caused it. A good simple prayer is to say, Lord I forgave them, but I still hurt, please heal me of the hurt they caused, and keep me from anger and bitterness about the situation.
Anger and bitterness are signs of a spiritual infection following a gashing wound. When life cuts us open, we become more vulnerable to outside pathogens. Allowing anger and bitterness to remain is to allow infection to run wild in your spirit. The danger of secondary infection often is greater than the harm caused by the original wound. Doctors teach that the washing of hands to keep infection away is essential to protecting life, as in the natural so in the spiritual.
Forgive us our trespasses even as we forgive those who trespass against us, is the single best advice ever given on remedying the dirt of life, and the hurts of life. I believe that the Lord's prayer is the simplest and most brilliant ever offered, and it is a pattern given to us by God to be prayed on a daily basis. Daily cleansing, and daily forgiveness, will keep the soul in a healthy state free from spiritual disease.
Close: prayer
