Bible Reading: Psalm 51:1-9  (Matthew 6:5-15)

Ever thought about what makes forgiveness, forgiveness? How do you know someone is really asking your forgiveness? Is it the sorrow they express, the lack of excuses and full ownership of what they did?  Is it the truthful explanation that they actually could see you may not be able to quickly forgive what it was they had done, and they are prepared that it may just take time to restore the relationship again.  How do you know forgiveness is forgiveness?  How often do we experience forgiveness as the person just saying I’m sorry you feel bad about what they did?  That’s not forgiveness at all, that’s making excuses, or saying I never meant to say that, when the truth is I’m really sorry I said out loud what I was thinking all along.

Today we step into this big courageous prayer Jesus gave to his disciples ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  Forgive us our sins Lord, we sin against you and one another.  Sins of omission and commission, the want and waste of our driving desires to have what I want, and want what I have, and how prepared I am to hurt or move aside anyone who gets in my way. Forgiveness is such a big thing for us, in the company of Jesus, we start praying about the relationship we have with our Father.  We have begun to pray about the things of God that matter, like who God is, what he is like, what he does.  Jesus gets the focus on us:¹¹ Give us today our daily bread. ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  ¹³ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  AMEN.  Give Us, forgive us, lead us, as well as give us Provision, pardon, and protection

Last week we looked at how Jesus told us to pray for bread ¹¹ Give us today our daily bread.  We are needy, Jesus reminds us we need bread for life.  We’re to pray not out of what we want asking God to give us what he knows we need.  The hardest part of asking for our daily bread Jesus tells us is coming to God and wanting what he will give us for today.  Trusting that Jesus is enough.  As we’re now getting to focus on that it is where we now stumble over a little word it’s the word – AND.

¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.   AND links forgiveness with us praying for bread, as we start by humbling ourselves before God praying God help us to depend on your unfailing love.  Supply our needs as we are needy beggars.  Help us Father not to be consumerists.  Help us to deal with not getting what we want, but be accepting of getting what we need and to not assume control over everything ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Pardon us O Lord.  The question is what are the debts Jesus was talking about.  The word we would usually use is sin.  The problem we would face is, if we did one of those straw polls down Peel Street on what people think sin is…The answer to it would be the big stuff, Sin is Murder, genocide, rape, theft.  The stuff that only bad people do, not the evil I do myself.  Have you ever had someone say to you “We’re all good people at heart aren’t we?”

The trouble is “We don’t sin against a commandment we sin against a person”[1] It’s what’s Paul was getting us thinking about, with how we act around God’s people ¹³ Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

In the Old Testament there are over 50 words for sin.  When Jesus prays with us he tells us to expose and name our sin, forgive us our debts.  As someone put it this way:  “God does not deal with sin by ridding our lives of it as if it were a germ, or mice in the attic.  God does not deal with sin by amputation as if it were a gangrenous leg, leaving us crippled, holiness on a crutch.  God deals with sin by forgiving us, and when he forgives us there is more of us, not less.”[2] The center stage of sin is our sin against God our refusal to have a personal relationship with God.  Sin breaks relationship, living life our own way, not God’s way.  Praying for forgiveness of our sin is not the exercise of listing them grading them and then ticking them off the wrongdoing list[3] ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  The focus of Jesus here is on forgive us: our debts, our sins, our trespasses.  We again see how Jesus gets us facing a frank admission of need.  We could try to live our lives not seeking to forgive or be forgiven by anyone.  Jesus invites us in to that relationship of God’s generosity, and our problem is the penalty of sin is death.  All because Jesus died for our sins on the cross.  Only he was perfect and sinless.  Only he had no sin in his life through his death he was able to take our sin on himself and bear the wrath we deserve, so that by believing in him we may have eternal life.  Deliver us from sin is as much a statement of faith as it is a confession of wrong.  ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. That blowtorch of God’s grace Jesus reminds us that forgiveness is all about God.  Forgiveness is a 2 way street then of how we treat others.  Like when Peter asked Jesus “How many times he would need to forgive his brother who sinned against him?” Jesus then told the parable of a servant, of a king who wanted to settle the accounts of what people owed him.  The servant couldn’t pay, it was a large debt, he begged for his and his families lives, so the master graciously cancelled his debt.  After being forgiven the same servant came across a servant who owed a small amount.  He wanted his money from him… ²⁸ “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded. ²⁹ “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’  ³⁰ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. ³¹ When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.  ³² “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. ³³ Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ ³⁴ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.  ³⁵ “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”  Matthew 18:21-35.  To pray about forgiving others is no light prayer, think about that for a moment.  Of those you pray asking God to help us forgive. Since what they did or said: Have we ever dwelt on it since? Have you taken that and used it against them? Talked with others about what happened? Allowed it to fester as a hindrance to our relationship with that person ever since?  Forgiveness is the promise to acknowledge that while they have hurt you, forgiveness is actually a promise: not to dwell on it, not to bring the incident up as blackmail, or Gossip anymore about it, or let it stand in the way we relate with them.  We can’t manipulate forgiveness, with this prayer Jesus gave us, of all the things Jesus repeats after he gives it.  Forgiveness is the one that he speaks about again.  Look down to verse 14-15 of Matthew 6. ¹⁴ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. ¹⁵ But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.  Hardness of heart is what God grieves most over.  Lacking the ability to not show the same mercy to others, forgiveness is the only way to know God we need Jesus death to cover our sins unconfessed sin is a cancer to the soul ,unforgiven sin of others is a poison to fellowship.  The grace of God is not what we bring to our relationship with him.  It is the sobering reality that this is all about what God has done for us through his son.  The natural question this morning is: “Do you nurse a bitterness of unforgiven sin with someone else?”  If that person is now be dead and there is no way of reconciling with them yourself, but have you handed it over to God confessing what it was that you nursed and harboured painfully in your soul.  Take the lead from Jesus forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.  If you know a particular sin burdening your heart, name that specifically before God, and reflect on who we are and how we’re behaving, what we’re saying to others or ourselves, and pray, asking God to be at work to make known to us the sins we are blind to and to know his strength to resist the temptation of the sins we know we struggle with.  Let us close saying the prayer Jesus prayed with his disciples in Matthew 6:9-13.  Will you join with me as we pray in the company of Jesus together out loud ⁹ “This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, ¹⁰ your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. ¹¹ Give us today our daily bread. ¹² And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ¹³ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  AMEN