Over the last four weeks, we have been in a series on prayer called “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.” We have been focusing on the Lord’s Prayer as Jesus’ primary teaching for us on how to model our prayers, not to be legalistic saying this is how you must pray, but to enhance our prayer life. So far we have looked at four areas of prayer: relationship, honoring, yielding, and petition. In fact repeat these after me [say them again]. Prayer is about a relationship with God, “our Father who art in heaven.” Prayer is talking with God our Father. We begin our prayers by honoring God, “hallowed be thy name.” We honor God by praising him, telling God how great he is, we appreciate God for what he has done in our life. When we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are asking God to bring his kingdom on earth just as it is in heaven. One of the primary ways God brings his kingdom is by using us, his people. So we are asking God to use us to accomplish his purposes on earth. Therefore as we submit or yield ourselves to God so that he will works through us until our life, our family, our community begin to reflect God’s kingdom in heaven. Last week we recognized that Jesus invites us to petition or ask God for our own personal needs, “give us this day our daily bread.” We are also recognizing God is the provider for all of our needs both physical and spiritual.
This week we are moving on to the fifth area: Forgiveness, “forgive us our debts (trespasses) as we forgive our debtors (those who trespass against us).”
Most versions of the Bible read, “forgive us our debts.” In our church we pray forgive us our trespasses. Essentially these are the same thing. Our debts, are what we owe God because we have violated his command or disobeyed him in some way. Many churches have gone away from the word debts because in our modern culture we tend to relate this to owing money, instead of relating it to sin. Several years ago, we began using the word trespass instead, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” To trespass means we have traveled where God doesn’t want us to be or we have done something which God doesn’t want us to do. We have trespassed on God’s perfect will. I think in our contemporary culture it would replaced trespass with the word sin we would understand what Jesus was saying, “forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us”.
Whatever word we use; debts, trespasses, or sins, it means we have done something we shouldn’t, we have violated God’s command, perhaps we have coveted our neighbors stuff, or acted in anger, or committed sexual sin, maybe we have not demonstrated love to others as we should, perhaps we said something hurtful to our spouse or parents or children, we have gossiped about someone. It can also mean we have avoided doing something God wants us to do. Perhaps we have not loved someone in the way God has instructed us.
NLT 1 John 3:17 But if anyone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need and refuses to help-- how can God’s love be in that person?
I. The Need for Forgiveness in Prayer
Why is forgiveness such a necessary part of prayer? Why can’t we just ask God for what we need and call it good? Remember prayer is based on our relationship with God. If there is unforgiven or unrepentant sin in our life, our sin distances us from God, it becomes an obstacle between us, and God may choose not to respond to our prayer.
NIV Isaiah 59:1 Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. 2 But your iniquities (that is your sins) have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
Our sin harms our prayer life because it harms our relationship with God. Fortunately, God in his grace and mercy does occasionally answer the prayers of those who continue in sin. But generally speaking God is more responsive to those who confess their sin and seek God’s forgiveness.
Jesus’ brother James reminds us that God pays special attention to those who are right with God:
NRS James 5:16b "The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective."
The righteous have powerful and effective prayers because they are right with God. To be righteous has nothing to do with all the good things you do. If you think you are righteous because of all the good things you do we have another word for that. We call that self-righteous. In Scripture righteousness is a status which God gives to those who have humbled themselves, confessed and repented of their sin and received God’s grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
II. God Offers Forgiveness Freely
Fortunately for us, God wants us to be righteous, he wants us to be in a right relationship with himself. For those of you who were here last week we looked at a passage that said God as our Father wants to shower good gifts upon us his children when we ask. Forgiveness is one of those “good gifts” God wants to give us. God wants to wipe the slate clean, to have a right relationship with us, God wants us to be in good standing with himself. He freely offer us forgiveness. He has given us a promise in his word.
NIV 1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
God can make this promise of forgiveness because Jesus gave his own life to take as the perfect sacrifice for our sin. It is nothing we deserve or have earned, it is God’s gift. The offer is on the table. It’s already a done deal, his signature is already on the paper, however there is a very simple catch. We must be willing to admit our sin (confession) and then we must be willing to receive God’s forgiveness.
III. Conditions of Forgiveness
1) Confession
First we have to own up to the fact that we have wronged God or another person(s). Have you noticed that it always easier to point out how someone else has wronged us than it is to admit we have sinned?
We need to be specific, if possible.
The passage I read earlier, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective begins:
NIV James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
Confession must precede healing. We must own up to what we have done before we will find the healing of forgiveness, whether from God or others.
2) Receiving Forgiveness
The second thing we must do is to receive forgiveness? Just because God offers it, doesn’t mean we receive it. How many of us continue to carry around a load of guilt over things which we have already asked God’s forgiveness?
Illustration
When we were on our mission trip to Mississippi for Hurricane Katrina, I ministered to a man who was riddled with past guilt because he had accidentally killed a woman during Desert Storm. I asked him if he had asked for God’s forgiveness, which he claimed he had over and over again. But he still carried the guilt around with him. The problem was that he couldn’t receive God’s forgiveness, and he couldn’t forgive himself. He believed that what he had done was too awful even for God to forgive. So I wrote down 1 Jo. 1:9 and whenever he felt pangs of guilt to read the Scripture passage to remind himself that through Jesus Christ he was forgiven.
3) Forgiving Others
If we are not able to receive God’s forgiveness, not only will we fail to receive God’s healing from guilt and shame, and be restored into a right relationship with God so he will hear our prayer. We will also have a problem forgiving those who have wronged us. Our ability to receive forgiveness directly affects our ability to offer forgiveness because forgiving others is not natural, it is a gift from God. By natural tendency is to harbor feelings of anger, resentment, revenge against those who hurt us or have wronged us.
Jesus taught the parable we read this morning because he wanted to demonstrate the need to both receive and offer forgiveness. In the parable, a servant owed millions of dollars to his master, but because the servant begged and pleaded, and the master was merciful he forgave the entire amount. Unbelievable, stunning. Unfortunately, the servant went out that same day and refused to forgive even the few bucks another servant owed him, no matter how much he begged and pleaded. He even had him thrown in jail because he could not pay.
Obviously Jesus was trying to make the point that the first servant should have offered forgiveness to the servant who owed him a couple bucks. But why didn’t the servant offer forgiveness? It was because he did not receive the forgiveness of his enormous debt in gratitude. He was forgiven but he continued to act as though he owed millions of dollars. If he had received the Master’s forgiveness of his huge debt he should have been grateful for being forgiven much and in his gratitude forgiven others. Ultimately the master, in anger, threw the servant who was forgiven the million dollars into prison.
In both the Lord’s Prayer and in this story, Jesus is clear that we must forgive others because we have been forgiven. If we do not forgive others, God will not forgive us. Jesus even repeated this command after the Lord’s Prayer to emphasize his point.
Matthew 6:14 For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
The measure with which God forgives us is dependent upon our willingness to forgive others.
If you find it difficult to forgive someone because of what they have done for you, chances are it is because you have not completely received the full measure of God’s forgiveness. You continue to carry the burden and the guilt around with you. Or you have failed to appreciate with gratitude the full extent of what Christ has done for you in forgiving your sins. God has forgiven us much through Jesus Christ. It is the lens through which we must offer forgiveness to others.
Paul spoke of this in Col. 3:13:
“You must make allowance for each other’s faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.”
By adding confession, repentance, and asking forgiveness in our prayer life we are effectively removing one of the greatest barriers between ourselves and God, our sin. We are allowing ourselves to enter into a fuller relationship with God. We are righteous, and our prayers are powerful and effective. That’s right your prayers, and my prayers will be powerful and effective because God listens intently to us. He knows that what we are requesting is based upon a heart for God.
Conclusion
Begin by prayerfully asking God if there is anyone whom you have never forgiven, either for an wound in the past or a recent hurt or misunderstanding. Or if there is a person you have forgiven in the past, but feelings of resentment, bitterness, or even revenge have flashed back into your mind.
Confess your sinful attitude or thoughts to God. Forgive that person(s).
If you find it difficult to forgive this person, have you received God’s forgiveness?
Is there anything in your life which you have done in disobedience to God, or against another person? Remember how much God has forgiven you in Jesus Christ.
By reflecting on how much God has forgiven in your life—both before you knew Him and since you became a Christian. How would your life be different if He held all these things against you? Thank Him for the way He has forgiven it all.
Ask God to help you forgive anyone whom you have not forgiven.
