(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

You're listening to audio from Faith Church Indie. This summer, we're going through the Gospels, learning about how understanding the tougher sayings of Christ can lead to a deeper connection with Him. Now here's the teaching.

Today's reading is from Matthew 6, verses 14 and 15. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, that was a short Scripture reading.

And did you detect a little softness in the thanks be to God response for it, maybe? I don't know. Well, hello, I'm Tom Macy, and I'm preaching today on this theme of forgiveness. I'm just a month past my 50th anniversary of graduating from seminary, and just two weeks past the 50th anniversary of my first Sunday as a pastor in Sumner, Nebraska, population 250.

It's probably not near that big now. We served there four years, then Columbus, Nebraska for five years, then Wichita for 19 years, and now 22 here at Faith, and it adds up to 50 years. And the common experiences that I had in all four places have been wonderful and rich.

Wonderful, wonderful experiences with God's people in those communities. But, another common experience in every place I've lived, every church I've served, every school I attended, every job I ever had, every neighborhood I ever lived in, the family I grew up in, and the family dynamics that Linda and I have shared for 54 years, a common factor in all times and places is the reality of sin and the need for forgiveness. To be requested, to be received, and to be extended.

Now it's risky to use superlatives, I know, but in my view, the problem of not doing what Jesus demands of us in today's text is very high on the scale of problems, not only in our world, but in the church. We so easily take offense over things large and small. We hold grudges and refuse to forgive, and the harm is incalculable.

So vital theme in scripture from beginning to end, in 2012 I was preaching a parable on forgiveness in a parable series, and it somehow got extended into four sermons instead of just one, with lots of questions, a lot of interaction, and I'm sure I'm gonna stir up a lot of questions today that I don't have three more Sundays to deal with, so we'll have to deal with it in another way. But we're only gonna touch on one aspect of forgiveness today, and you've heard it already, but you're gonna hear it again. Jesus said, if you forgive others their trespasses, let's just call that sins, I think that'd be easier.

If you forgive others their sins, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your Father forgive your sins. This is a hard saying of a kind Savior. And the focus here is not on the offender, where we really think it ought to be, but it's on the offended, the one who's being hurt, and is now challenged very strongly to forgive.

The context for this hard saying is the Lord's Prayer that comes from the Sermon on the Mount, a summary of what Jesus taught to the crowds, much of what was repeated many times in different places as you read through the Synoptic Gospels particularly. It's very practical, teaching about anger and lust and divorce and oaths and retaliation and the requirement to love your enemies. A summary statement at the end of the first chapter, chapter five of the Sermon on the Mount, is you must therefore be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.

Now that's a hard saying of a kind Savior if there ever was one. I don't think it made the list of messages for the summer. And then Jesus moves on to the themes of giving, praying, and fasting, and in the larger section of what Jesus said about prayer, we come to our text today.

Well, let's read some of that context to understand where it's coming from. Verses nine and following, pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And the prayer stops right there.

It doesn't have the ending that we want to continue with, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. That was probably added by the early church in some of the development of formal prayer and liturgy taking language from David's prayer in 1 Chronicles 29.

Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory. Yours is the kingdom. A great expression, and I think it fits well at the end of this prayer.

But this prayer is not really designed to just be repeated, though I think it's good to do that in unison at times. But it's not just to recite and repeat, but to personalize and build on in your personal prayer life the categories of worship and dependence and repentance and protection. And our focus is on the issue of sin and forgiveness.

Notice Jesus doesn't add commentary to any part of this prayer except this one line, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And here's the commentary, verses 14 and 15, for if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will forgive your sins. And if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your Father forgive your sins.

The focus is not on the offender and what they need to do, which of course would be to repent. The focus is on the one who is offended. The one who's been hurt.

The one who's been treated wrongly. The one who's called to forgive. What do we do when we are wronged? Well, the obvious assumption behind this teaching is that a core need is the need for forgiveness.

We all need forgiveness. We've all sinned against God. Key summary statements are found throughout Scripture.

They've all fallen away. Together they've become corrupt. There's no one who does good, not even one, and you're not an exception.

Isaiah 53, 6, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and you're not an exception. Or Romans 3, 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and I'm not an exception to that.

You're not an exception to that. Not only Jesus is an exception to that. And the ultimate consequence for sin is death, God's judgment on Adam and Eve.

Their sin and judgment passed to us, as Romans 6, 23 says, for the wages of sin is death. We need forgiveness. We all need forgiveness from God to be reconciled to God.

And additionally, we sin against each other, and we need forgiveness to be reconciled to each other, admitting our sins to one another, and the focus here, we need to forgive. Well, how's that possible? Well, the basis for forgiveness is that sin requires a blood sacrifice, meaning death. Don't forget the wages of sin is death.

The Old Testament Hebrew Scriptures teach this in the sacrificial system. Remember our series in Leviticus, last Lenten season in the spring, earlier this year, animals were sacrificed. And in a chapter and a half in Leviticus, it says 10 times the repeated words, the priest shall make an atonement, a blood sacrifice, and it says he, or demeaning on the context, they, singular and plural, shall be forgiven.

But even this is not adequate, but was a prophetic foreshadowing of the ultimate provision for forgiveness, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. That's what the gospel, that's what the good news is about, and we see this from the beginning of the gospels. John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

The Last Supper with the disciples, Jesus said, for this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins. After his death and resurrection, before his ascension, Jesus met with the disciples and explained the gospel in these words. One of those key statements that tell us kind of what the gospel is in a nutshell.

Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all the nations. So forgiveness is provided through the sacrificial substitutionary death of Christ. Forgiveness is received, it's applied through repentance and faith in Christ, and this is central to the gospel as proclaimed in the early church.

Peter's first message at Pentecost, repent and be baptized everyone in the name of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We're going to come back to that very important addition there.

Peter is speaking to the Gentiles, Acts 10, 43, that everyone who believes in him, Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name. And Paul in Acts 13, let it be known to you therefore that through this man, Jesus, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. And so this is vitally important, critically necessary for our relationship with God that we have the forgiveness of our sins, our offenses against God.

But our text today links, Jesus links our forgiveness from God to another essential, our forgiveness of each other. Look at the meaning of Jesus' words in the Lord's Prayer. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your Father forgive your sins. I feel a tremendous tension with this text, this hard saying of Jesus, because the tension in me is that I dare not in any way explain this away or soften it or weaken Jesus' words.

No, this is serious. Yet based on other texts, I don't believe this means that my salvation, my ultimate forgiveness from God is based on my perfection in forgiving you and forgiving others. If it does, I'm in big, big, big trouble.

And I think you are too. Confession of sin and repentance is not just a one-time initiatory act, but an ongoing necessity in our relationship with God and with each other. Apostle John writes, 1 John 1, 8 to 10, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. In John 16, when Paul and Silas were dealing with the Philippian jailer who cried out in great fear, what must I do to be saved? They didn't say believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved if you have all your sins fully resolved and have no lingering unforgiveness in your heart. He wasn't that far along.

No, that will be a lifelong repetitive process. And so yes, we're called to repent, but our salvation is not based on the good works of getting all our sins conquered in order to be saved. Rather, when we repent, when we have a change of mind and heart, turn to God to trust in Jesus instead of self.

As Peter says in Acts 2, 38, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. We are, in Jesus' terms to Nicodemus, we are born again, transformed from within. And the evidence of true faith will be a change of heart and mind that is repelled by sin and selfish desires and wants the things, as Hebrews 6, 9 says, things that belong to or accompany salvation.

There's a lot of things that accompany salvation, praise God. So having received forgiveness from God for our sins, sins that are worthy of eternal judgment that He has forgiven, isn't it unthinkable that we would refuse to forgive others as we really begin to grasp the magnitude of what God has done for us? So, our forgiveness of others, of each other, flows out of our having been forgiven by God. Now, I think we're a little ahead of ourselves because we've spoken of forgiveness for the last several minutes without defining it, and I think this happens a lot.

We discuss things in great detail, but don't define our terms, and so we really don't know in the end what we're talking about. So let's give it a shot. What is forgiveness? The core idea of forgiveness comes right out of the Lord's Prayer, and there's been lots of efforts to improve on the Lord's Prayer, the old King James language of the Lord's Prayer, trying to improve on that and come up with some other word that's not so financially tied, debts.

But debts is the best word for this, to understand what we're talking about. Forgive us our debts. Yes, we automatically put that in financial terms, that which is owed to another, but it's far broader than finances.

And the debt we owe to God can't be repaid apart from our death in eternal judgment unless another means of payment is provided. And through the cross of Christ, God forgives our debt, the greater debt. Listen carefully.

God forgives our debt, the greater debt, and we are called to forgive the lesser debt that's rightly owed to us from those who've offended us. To forgive is to release the debt, what God does for us. God's forgiving us is to cancel an impossible mountain of debt that we owe to God based on the merits of Christ's suffering and death on the cross.

Our forgiving of each other is to follow the model of God's forgiving us a much lesser debt, much smaller scale, no matter what offenses we have suffered. Amy Orr Ewing was recently interviewed on the Trinity Forum podcast about her new book that came out earlier this year, just simply titled Forgiveness, subtitled Reclaiming Its Power in a Culture of Outrage and Fear. I highly, highly recommend this book.

I recommend the podcast Trinity Forum where she was interviewed, and they have a lot of other good interviews as well. You don't want to miss the Ben Sasse interview from just a few weeks ago that's just excellent. But she writes this, our canceling of debts owed to us by others is inextricably linked to God's canceling of debts against Him.

Forgiveness becomes a way of life for followers of Jesus. Listen to that carefully. Forgiveness becomes a way of life for followers of Jesus.

We release people from our grievances and from any obligation to fulfill what they owe us. So what is Jesus then requiring of us in this hard saying? Now one of the problems in applying this is that we may think of forgiveness primarily in terms of my feelings of guilt and my feelings of freedom from it. Or as Orr Ewing points out, that we tend to think of forgiveness in psychological terms.

Kind of a trick, a determination to stop being mad at the other person, and you determine to do that and you feel better, you feel kind of superior by taking the high road there, but then it cycles back around and you find yourself upset again. It's really not dealt with. Can you relate to that? You ever been mad at someone and you're really, really frustrated? You feel betrayed, you're hurt by them, you're holding a grudge, you realize that's not good or healthy at all, and you feel guilty for not forgiving them because you have some of this background teaching in your mind, and so you decide to forgive them.

You feel relief, things are all better for a little while, and then you start remembering again the grievance and what happened, and you get mad all over again. I'm embarrassed to say how often this happened to me, but it's reality. You get trapped in a cycle of forgiving and resenting and forgiving and resenting, or it works on both sides of this.

You carry guilt for a wrong you committed. You know you're the offender, and you confess your sin. You feel relief from it, but only for a while because you don't feel forgiven.

Guilt returns or remains another cycle that never resolves. Now, my friends, I don't want to downplay the importance of emotions, but feeling relief is not the essence of forgiveness. It ultimately will be a benefit, a wonderful benefit, and I've experienced emotional relief many times after confession to have my conscience cleared, but the core of forgiveness is rather to cancel the debt owed, the debt owed us by the one who sinned against us.

How's that done? How do we truly forgive? How does this work out in life? One of the tensions I've felt all this week in working on this message is 50 years of walking with people through really, really hard things. Now, I'm a guy who does a lot of reflecting on the past and going through all of life all the time, and so I'm going back 50 years, and I'd been a pastor for one week, and I'd got through the first Sunday in this little church in Nebraska, and the next Sunday is July 4th, 1976. Two hundred years here or there, what's the difference? July 4th, 1976, and they decided, these two little churches that now are one little church because of the population decline in the community, these two little churches, the Free Church and the Baptist Church, decided to come together and have a community service for the 200th birthday of our country in the high school gym, and guess who they asked to speak to that group to introduce the new Ricky Preacher in town? So that was my job, a little nervous about that.

Two days before that, I think it was the second, maybe the first of July, a man came to me, one of our leaders. I knew him, but didn't really know him. I didn't know anybody very well.

I'm just brand new there. He came to me looking like death, and he had with him, a dear friend, another leader in the church, and the second man was crying, and he handed me a note, and the note explained that his wife had left him the day before, taken their three kids with no indication of where they were going, and he had no hint for several weeks of where they were. I had no idea what I was doing, but God was faithful, and what a privilege to walk with him through this dark valley, not just for a day or two, but for weeks and even a couple of years until God did some wonderful restoration in him.

Didn't restore the family back to him, but wonderful restoration in him. So, so many examples over 50 years of wounded, hurt people walking this path. They have truly been harmed, and you get angry with them when you realize what they've gone through, but then they're tempted by bitterness and wrestling with the complexities of justice and mercy, and it's a hard path.

And it truly has been and still is a privilege to walk alongside in these hard, hard things. On the other hand, I've seen over these 50 years some pretty chronic, petty resentments between believers that made no sense. I've had difficult relationships with people that I couldn't seem to figure out that are embarrassing that I couldn't do better with them.

So, my point here is somewhat that one size, it doesn't seem like one size fits all. There are examples of extreme betrayal, cruelty, and even criminal acts, but others seemingly over-sensitive, chip on the shoulder, easily offended by a careless remark, neither side willing to budge, trivial things that ought to just be dismissed, just blow them off. It's not that big of a deal.

Not rising even to the level of needing to be confronted. Just let it go. So that's the extreme range that we deal with here.

Now, I don't want to paint that second picture too ugly. I've witnessed God's people show remarkable grace, remarkable grace in difficult situations. But even though there's a wide divergence of experience from horrific to trivial, what is Jesus calling us to do? What does it mean to forgive? It's essentially this, put aside thoughts and plans of revenge and getting even, or holding it over them, which ultimately means leaving that person in God's hands, releasing any debt and your claim on it.

Romans 12, 19, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it's written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. You feel the tension between forgiveness and justice.

It's not that you are dismissing or making light of the seriousness of the offense, or even releasing the desire that justice be done in our world, no. But to recognize that justice is ultimately in the hands of God, and will you not trust God to do what is right and just? And to recognize that all accounts aren't settled in this world, but all accounts will be settled. You can be sure of that.

And God entrusts temporal justice to the state, doesn't mean that all justice waits for the final judgment. The temporal justice to the state, the governing authorities of Romans 13, and in disputes between believers, that temporal justice and work of reconciliation is given to the church. We have a responsibility to deal with things like that.

But it's not your job individually to resolve all wrongs, rather leave it to God and to those to whom the authority has been forgiven. But the heart of forgiveness is to put aside your rights and demands, to release them and leave it with God, and as you put aside thoughts of revenge and getting even, then the second thing you do is you take the high road of love. This is not an isolated text in terms of how to respond to it.

It's throughout the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, it becomes even more concentrated, though it's there in the Old Testament as well. Let me just give you some text. Romans 12, 17, repay no one evil for evil.

Romans 12, 21, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. First Thessalonians 5, 15, see that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. Jesus said, bless those who curse you.

Proverbs 24, 17, do not rejoice when your enemy falls and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Matthew 5, 44, but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Here's a good one, you'll have to work to apply it, but you can do it.

Give it some thought. Exodus 23, 4, if you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him. Now that's going to happen to you in the next week or two, but you've got to be able to recognize what that ox looks like, that neighbor that you've got resentment against, and you see something negative happen to him.

How are you going to respond? Romans 12, 18, if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably.

(This file is longer than 30 minutes. Go Unlimited at https://turboscribe.ai/ to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.)