Take the Shackles off my Feet So I Can Dance
PPT 1 Series Title
PPT 2 Message Title
This is our 3rd week on Mt. 6:12. In week 1 we talked about the notebooks we have on others. Love does not keep a record of wrongs done, but we often do. The Lord's prayer teaches us that if we want God to take away the notebook of wrongs we have done, we have to be willing to give Him the notebook of wrongs others have done. In week 2 we answered the question do people need to repent for us to forgive them. Using Jesus as an example we concluded the answer was no, they don't have to repent. I also used a spear to illustrate the hurts others cause, how we bind them firmly to us when we adopt a no repentance, no forgiveness theology, and also tried to explain the difference between forgiveness and a wound.
Today's text:
Mt 6:12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Today's message is about getting rid of spiritual weights that can rob you of joy, peace, and a graceful spirit.
I want to begin this morning by noting something about the Lord's prayer that we hardly if ever take notice of.
Us, Our, We. These are all plural forms. Not one commentary I read mentioned the plural nature of this part of the prayer. In all honesty I myself never thought about it before preparing this message today. In today's message I want to talk about getting rid of all the notebooks of wrongs done by others we carry around. I'll explain more as the message continues. First up, I want to state...
1. We as humans have a sinful predisposition to get mad at others.
PPT 3 Text
Ps 15:1 (A Psalm of David.) O LORD, who may abide in Thy tent? Who may dwell on Thy holy hill?
Ps 15:2 He who walks with integrity, and works righteousness, And speaks truth in his heart.
Ps 15:3 He does not slander with his tongue, Nor does evil to his neighbor, Nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
I want to draw your attention to the last part of v. 3. Taking up a reproach. In short I think it means you get mad at someone because of what they did to someone else. It happens all the time. Why do you think that is?
Paul said it this way, in my flesh dwells no good thing. There is a part of us that is like flypaper to the hurts and wounds that others receive.
PPT 4 pic of fly stuck to flypaper
The problem for us is that once it sticks to us, it can be difficult to remove, because among other reasons we gave it permission to land.
PPT 5 pic of lots of flies stuck to flypaper.
As if that isn't bad enough, this is what begins to happen over time. We allow nasty dead things to accumulate and attach themselves to us. Have you ever been to someone's house and they had flypaper up. Disgusting right?! Have you ever accidentally brushed up against flypaper and got some stuck to your hair? That is the way you need to think about conversations when someone tries to dump their offenses on you.
I have met people whose lives are full of the hurts not only done to them, but also they have taken up hurts that were done to others. There are 5 major tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. (Umami comes from Japanese and means delicious taste) I think in some ways all of us have a taste.
People with a lot of flies stuck to them are bitter. But even if the dominant aspect of your personality isn't bitter, it is a fact of human nature that we tend to take a perverse enjoyment in bitter things. Dark chocolate, and coffee are two examples of bitter things we like.
Jesus a told a proverb once that teaches that dead things attract other things that like dead things.
PPT 6 text
Lu 17:36 ["Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other will be left."]
Lu 17:37 And answering they *said to Him, "Where, Lord?" And He said to them, "Where the body [is,] there also will the vultures be gathered."
It is a sad but true part of our humanity that our sinful nature is often drawn to and enjoys feasting on dead things in the lives of others. Hearing gossip often brings us the vulture side of our sinful nature. We enjoy it, we relish in it, we gobble it up greedily. Is that what we ought to be as believers, feasting on the dead things in the live of others? Yet, too often that is exactly what we do.
Remember Psalm 15:3 taking up a reproach? Trapp's commentary has interesting take on Psalm 15:3: "The tale bearer carrieth the devil in his tongue; the tale hearer in his ear."
Adam Clarke's commentary says this about Psalms 15:3:
"Nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour.] The word cherpah, which we here translate a reproach, comes from the root charaph, which means to strip, or make bare, to deprive one of his garments; Another form of the same word is choreph, which means the winter, because it strips the fields of their clothing, and the trees of their foliage. By this, nature appears to be dishonored and disgraced. The application is easy: a man, for instance, of a good character is reported to have done something wrong: the tale is spread, and the slanderers and backbiters carry it about; and thus the man is stripped of his fair character, of his clothing of righteousness, truth, and honesty...
Then Clarke goes on to compare people who engage in such disrobing of a persons character with and Old English proverb which speaks of, "Those who feed, like the flies, passing over all a man's whole parts to light upon his wounds, will take up the tale, and carry it about." (Condensed and slightly abridged for clarity's sake.)
Flies and vultures doesn't sound like something God's children should be compared to does it?
Bill Gothard has a famous teaching on offenses a lot of which I agree with, but he says one thing I totally disagree with. He makes a statement that explains from his understanding why it is so hard to get rid of offenses that never happened to us, that we took up on someone else's behalf. He teaches that God gives grace for us to handle our own personal injustice but does not promise to give grace to us if we are a 'bystander' to the injustice. In other words since they didn't sin against us, God doesn't give us grace to forgive them, He only gives it to the person who was personally sinned against.
I think the Lord's prayer totally invalidates that idea. Forgive us our debts even as we forgive our debtors.
Who is included in your our? Isn't Jesus teaching here we are to forgive not only those who have sinned against us personally, but also we are to pray forgiveness on those who have sinned against everyone that is a part of the group that is meant by "our." Your family, your friends, your neighbors, God does give us grace to release everyone who has sinned against us and against ours.
2. I want to give you a very quick but I think powerful illustration of what taking up offenses does and how it impacts us.
Illus: a coat with a lot of mini notebooks attached to it. The notebooks contain the things that others have done to me, their sins, their transgressions. They are weights in our spiritual life as Hebrews 12 speaks of. When we take up offenses we are just adding someone else's notebooks to our own, thus weighing us down more. Illustrate by putting weights on my upraised praising arms until they are so heavy they fall down.
Describe these offenses as weights, and then share how they can so drag us down we will lose our joy spiritually. Use the song, "Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance", to illustrate the point that the Lord's prayer Jesus gave shows His genius in that it was intended not only to remove offenses that happened to us personally, but also to get rid of others we picked up along the way.
We have a need as individuals to not only get forgiveness for our own sins, but to also be freed of the weight of offense given to us by others, and the weights of offense we have picked up.
3. Now lets talk about sin as a debt, and talk about payment for those debts.
A good way to be free of these notebooks that really belong to others is to think of sin as a debt. When someone sins against us they have taken something from us, or from someone we care about. They have taken our peace, our joy, whatever, and in a sense what they stole from us and they now owe us.
There is a very interesting Greek word that is only found twice in the NT.
It is tetelestai.
PPT 7 Tetelestai
John 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, "It is finished!" And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit.
The word in English, "finished" is the Greek word tetelestai and as I said it is a very interesting word.
The word tetelestai was also written on business documents or receipts in New Testament times indicating that a bill had been paid in full. The Greek-English lexicon by Moulton and Milligan says this:
"Receipts are often introduced by the phrase [sic] tetelestai, usually written in an abbreviated manner..." (p. 630). The connection between receipts and what Christ accomplished would have been quite clear to John's Greek-speaking readership; it would be unmistakable that Jesus Christ had died to pay for their sins.
So in a sense, taking up an offense, is holding the attitude that others need to pay you back for what they have done.
Look at this verse:
PPT 8 text
Col 2:13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;
Col 2:14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;
Jesus who paid my debt also paid your debt, if you accept payment for your debt, you have to accept it for others also.
When Jesus died on the cross he filled heaven's coffers with grace that covered everyone's sins.
Because of the coffers Jesus filled we have the grace to forgive others also.
That is perhaps one of the reasons for the Lord's prayer to say, forgive us our debts, even as we forgive our debtors. The genius of Jesus in a plural.
God wants us to be free and stay free of those weights.
I want to close with a picture and then a short 30 second video
PPT 9 Graphic Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, post no evil.
Facebook is of people spreading their offenses. Gun control, what Trump has said, or Al Sharpton, beware when you see those things to remember part of you is fly paper.
PPT 10 Video There may be bugs on some of you mugs but there aint no bugs on me.
That commercial is about a dog being free of bugs because of medicine. The Lords prayer is God's medicine for us to be free of the bugs of offense.
Grace and forgiveness is how we keep spiritual bugs off of us.
Close: Lord I release all the notebooks I have on others, and I pray you help me not add any again.
