Love is Exclusive: Enter the Narrow Gate

Big idea: remember we daily depend on God for provision - by asking for it

Intro me

A couple of weeks back we were looking at the question of why we pray. We came up with three answers - anyone remember what those were? [interaction] connection, dependency, prayer changes things, right? Why we pray - at least some of why we pray - and then last week we moved onto the question of how we pray, looking at the famous prayer Jesus taught his first followers - still a key part of Christian devotion today - there it is, up on our wall, even.

Peter helped us think about the incredible opportunity we have to speak with God - God who invites us to address him intimately, as Father, though He’s the king of heaven. Peter showed us we can approach God as our Father only because of Jesus and what he’s done. We saw the pattern Jesus gives us for prayer begins with God, not us, and His great plan to bring His perfect Kingdom into being - a kingdom where everyone can name God as their father.

But there’s more than just that God-ward opening, that Kingdom framing to the Lord’s prayer. Once we have that orientation, once we’ve got that perspective, Jesus teaches us to bring our needs to God. We’re going to look at the beginning of that section together today, just two short petitions - but before we do, let’s read.

We’re in Matthew’s gospel, chapter 6 and starting at verse 9 - so if you have one of these blue Bibles, that’s page _______. Matthew chapter 6 verse 9. And Cam is reading for us today.

Matthew 6:9–15 NIV

“This, then, is how you should pray: “ ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today 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 the evil one.’ For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Thanks Cam - so, just two short petitions here, only a few words, so we’ll be done in no time, right? right!...

Well, let’s start by getting clear on what it is we’re praying for; otherwise it’s a bit like randomly ordering stuff off of a foreign restaurant's menu where you don’t really understand the words. You could be asking for anything! Ah, sir, the pickled jellyfish you ordered is ready. So let’s dig in: Mt 6:11

Matthew 6:11 NIV

Give us today our daily bread.

What are we asking for from the menu? bread. Easy enough, right? Simple stuff.

You might think so but plenty of great minds down through church history have seen other things here - in the 4th century, Augustine reads bread and thinks of communion - bread and wine remembering Jesus’ death in our place - so is this about daily reconciliation with God? But Augustine’s an ideas guy so he also thinks of the bible - in Mt 4:4 Jesus tells us people don’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from God - and that’s what the bible is - words to us from God. Is this about our daily slice of the bible? And that’s just Augustine - lots of other people have thought lots of other things. .. so what are we asking for?

Well, I think it’s bread. Alright, not exactly just bread and bread only. But material provision - the basic things we need for life. Flip ahead to v31 and you’ll see there’s this continuing focus on material provision - what we’ll eat, what we’ll drink, what we’ll wear - hopefully not literal bread. That would be odd. Wearing bread I guess might work - sort of making a human sandwich - but there’s awkward potential with sourdough and air bubbles, right?!

So Jesus teaches us to pray for our own material provision as the first thing - the basic things we need for life. Notice that it’s bread we’re to pray for, not cake. This is about needs not wants, about basics not luxuries. I like bread myself - but even in the ancient world they had better, finer things than bread - bread was the basic, the ground floor, the everyday. The cheeseburger rather than the royale delux double with bacon.

So we are encouraged to bring our needs to God - and particularly here our daily needs. In Jesus’ day there was a lot more hand-to-mouth living than now - no weird chemical injected bread which looks exactly the same, week after week as it sits on the kitchen counter, gradually going down one slice at a time. It would need to be fresh each day so they’d really feel and understand that daily concern around provision.

That’s what we’re praying for - daily provision - next question: but why? particularly, why pray for this if God already knows we need it (and verse 8 makes it totally clear that he does - even before we ask). Remember those ‘why pray’ answers from a previous week we started with? Here, I think the biggest why is that idea of depedency. That idea of expressing to ourselves and God the totality of our dependence on him. Reminding ourselves of it each day.

But wait.. I have a question. What if you’ve prayed for your daily bread, you’ve prayed for your basic needs, but you still find yourself short? “Lord, I don’t have what I need.” Or, on the other hand, what if you’ve prayed for your basic needs and instead catastrophe comes and you get more problems rather than more provision? You needed money for rent and instead the washing machine breaks down and lands you with another bill. “Lord, I don’t need this!”

Does God fail to answer this prayer for our basic needs - ever? This is not an easy question. And though there are people here who know what it is to truly be in need, there are many more followers of Jesus around the world who live daily in desperate need. And I’m sure many pray this prayer - yet still find themselves in need.

What do we have to help us wrestle this through? Well, Jesus assures us our Father knows what we need before we even ask. Jesus assures us our father cares about practical, material provision - what we’ll eat, what we’ll drink. Both truths are set out plainly for us in this Sermon on the Mount.

I think here we have to believe that God knows what need more deeply and more perfectly and more fully still. And he loves us more deeply and more perfectly and more fully. And though we might not understand how it could be true, I think we have to trust that in love he is in fact giving us what we need as our perfect loving heavenly Father.

There’s a picture I read about recently that’s been helping me as I wrestle with this. Imagine eternity past as a circle, a huge gigantic circle. And imagine eternity future as another huge gigantic circle. And this life we’re living just now is at the tiny microscopic point that those two circles touch. 70 years, maybe even a hundred years, is absolutely nothing next to eternity. If we were to zoom in and in and in again, eternity past and eternity future’s circles growing larger and larger, this present life where they touch is still an invisibly small point.

Could it be that what we thought was critical, what we thought was our deepest need, was actually not? Could there be something which hurts, something which seems wrong, seems incomprehensible in this tiny dot of the present that will turn out to be for our good and for the good of God’s people in eternity future?

It’s not an easy answer, not an easy pill to swallow, but yes, I think there could. I think that’s what we have to conclude: Our father knows what we need - what we really, really, really need - and as a loving father, He will give it to us.

[pause]

“give us this day our daily bread” - dependency on God for our material, practical provision - but we’re going to take on another petition together today, too - and it’s another about dependency we have on God for provision:

Matthew 6:12 (NIV)

And forgive us our debts

Jesus reinforces this right after the Lord’s Prayer as we read, showing us debts means sins or transgressions or failures - all good ways to capture the concept. Ways we have fallen short of God’s perfect design for us - in what we do, what we fail to do, what we say, even what we think.

The first thing we should notice is this anticipates disciples of Jesus will have an ongoing need for forgiveness. We’ve just been talking about praying for daily bread, right? Wouldn’t make any sense to pray for daily bread only every second Tuesday! So this prayer is obviously designed for daily use which means Jesus is expecting us to need to ask for forgiveness from God not just occasionally, perhaps after a particularly epic fail, but on a daily basis. We don’t graduate from dependency on God for our material provision - and we don’t graduate from dependency on God for forgiveness of our failures either.

Although we’re being transformed and the journey has started, we’re not the finished product and we haven’t arrived. Jesus teaches us to seek daily forgiveness - and he knows us better than we know ourselves - knows the scale of our faults and failings even when we don’t. So when I come to this petition and I’m like “forgive us our debts - uh, what did I miss today?” and I can’t come up with anything - the truth isn’t that I’m doing so well, it’s that I’m seeing so poorly and partially my own faults and failings still.

But the observant among you will notice we’ve only looked at half of this second petition. I know I’ve been going a while but we can’t tap out here until we’ve looked at the whole thing - including the challenging rider. Mt 6:12

Matthew 6:12 NIV

And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And just in case we thought this was a minor detail, more of a footnote or a subclause than something central and core, Jesus chooses to underline exactly one thing in the whole prayer: this. Mt 6:14-15

Matthew 6:14–15 NIV

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Just in case you were in any doubt. Just in case you thought there was any wiggle room. Nope. This is the only action from our side, the only part for us, in the whole prayer. But it’s a biggie. So let’s take it apart and see if we can make sense of this.

First, what does it mean to forgive? It’s a simple word, right, but what does it actually mean? When have you forgiven someone? When have you not? What do you actually need to do to forgive someone? Just say the words? It’s helpful to use this picture of debt that Jesus has brought us here. Well, forgiving someone is like cancelling their debt - and the alternative, the opposite, is demanding it be repaid.

But it’s not quite that simple - just a little later on in Matthew’s gospel we’ll see the Pharisees enraged by a Jesus who claims to forgive sins - enraged because that’s something God and God alone can do - because those sins were against him, those debts were to him. Mt 9:2,3,6

Matthew 9:6 NIV

But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.”

The best way I’ve found to think about this is to imagine there are two directions for debt, two directions for forgiveness. Jesus isn’t here telling us to take the place of God and forgive debts that are owed to him. That’d be like seeing the classic robber with the stripey sack full of cash running out of the bank and telling him “I forgive you.” You very well may do but I can tell you for sure the bank does not! Jesus is requiring us here to forgive horizontally - but we do that knowing God will still judge vertically.

So what does it mean to release the debt horizontally?

Later on in Matthew’s gospel Jesus will tell a famous story about a master and his servants. One owes the master a vast debt but is astonishingly forgiven when he audaciously asks. Sound familiar? Then he finds a fellow servant who owes him just a few pennies and Mt 18:28 is caught throttling him, demanding his money now. I think that’s one good picture for us of forgiveness - of what it’s not, at least! Are you actively pursuing the debt, going after them, hunting them down, demanding they repay? “Say sorry.” “Give it back.” “Pay up.” All of those show we have not forgiven horizontally.

Matthew 18:28 NIV

“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.

Now as I say that, I think it’s really important we’re clear that God is a god of justice. Jesus is absolutely not teaching us here to sweep wrongdoing under the rug. if you’ve been with us over the last while, perhaps you’ll remember we talked about Jesus’ command “do not resist an evil person” Mt 5:39 and his command to “love your enemies” Mt 5:44 - as we spoke about those, we saw both of them were given in the context of God as judge - leaving judgement to him.

The church has made terrible mistakes covering up wrongdoing which should have met justice. You can forgive someone - totally forgive - and still report a crime to the police. You release that horizontal debt - but there’s still a vertical debt. Justice still will be done - and the bible teaches us that God has entrusted justice to the state - Rom 13. You can - you must - forgive horizontally. But you don’t have the right to forgive vertically - that belongs to God, and to those he has authorised to enact justice in this world, imperfect though they may be.

Release the debt horizontally - do that just as God has released your debt vertically. And do that knowing there is a sense in which you don’t just release the other person, you release yourself too. Bitterness often grows out of holding on to horizontal debts - nursing that hurt. And bitterness, as someone put it, is “like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die”. So forgive your debtors for your own good too. Again, knowing God is judge - forgive horizontally with confidence in God vertically.

So, releasing the horizontal debt - but let me give you another picture of forgiveness which I think can help us: Forgiveness is choosing not to remember. We’re told that when God forgives our wickedness, He remembers our sins no more Jer 31:34.

Jeremiah 31:34 (NIV)

“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

That doesn’t mean God’s getting on a bit, and absent mindedly forgets what we did. In Hebrew thinking, remembering is bringing the past into the present. Not remembering is the opposite: leaving the past in the past. Forgiveness is choosing not to remember those horizontal debts - choosing to leave them in the past rather than to bring them into the present. Choosing not to remind others of them. Choosing not to remind ourselves of them.

Obviously this is not an easy thing that Jesus is asking us for here - this is hard. I really only know small debts in my life - I don’t think anyone’s ever done anything truly terrible to me. Even so, it sometimes feels impossible for me to let even small things go. So I can hardly imagine how this must feel for anyone that has been gravely hurt. But still, we have to wrestle with what Jesus teaches us here. What Jesus underlines for us here. I mean, you don’t need a theology degree to see what Jesus is asking for. And even a theology degree won’t find you an easy way out of this one.

Two final things to say before we’re done: first, a response to the sheer difficulty of what Jesus is asking us here:

First, notice this whole section is spoken to children of the King - see how the prayer starts in verse 9 with “our father” - how, even as he underlines this call to forgive, Jesus shows us that call is made to children of the King - verse 14 and 15 “your heavenly father”, “your father”. Children of the king become like the king - a king who is fundamentally merciful and forgiving. Jesus, our king, is fundamentally merciful and forgiving - as we’ll see as we follow him all the way to the cross. “Father forgive them” he’ll say to the soldiers who nailed him to it. As we must know in our own lives if we are truly his followers - the only road there for any of us is merciful forgiveness.

We’ve said it again and again: this whole section of teaching here is Jesus’ blueprint for his kingdom of transformed hearts. His blueprint for the kingdom of transformed hearts. This is this destination - but we are still on the journey to that Kingdom. A kingdom where the merciful are blessed as they are shown mercy. A Kingdom where the peacemakers are blessed because they are children of God. The truth is that every one of us is still a work in progress

Second, a response to the directionality or the conditionality that we seem to see here. Reading verse 12, we ask for forgiveness as people who have forgiven. Reading verse 14 and 15, it’s even clearer: Jesus wants us to know if we’re hoping for forgiveness from our heavenly Father - and we need it daily, as we’ve seen - if we’re hoping for forgiveness, it seems very clear that this only follows forgiving others. if you forgive .. your heavenly father will also forgive - will, future. if you don not forgive … your father will not forgive - will, future. It seems that Jesus wants to make it abundantly plain that it’s forgivers who can hope for forgiveness.

And that matches the saying we ran into back at the start of our journey through this chunk of Jesus’ teaching - Mt 5:7

Matthew 5:7 NIV

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

merciful now - present? You will be shown mercy on that day - future.

Thing is, we spent months working through the letter to the Galatian church. And our big takeaway there was the wonderful truth that JESUS + NOTHING = EVERYTHING. That is, there’s nothing at all we bring to the table when we’re seeking God’s mercy, His salvation. It’s Jesus plus nothing which equals everything. So how could our forgiveness be conditional, how could it need to follow that forgiving of others?

In fact, we see the call to forgive others flowing out of God having forgiven us, following it rather than leading to it, repeatedly in the New Testament - Eph 4:32 // Col 3:13

Ephesians 4:32 NIV

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Colossians 3:13 NIV

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

we believe the bible speaks with one voice because it has one writer and one mind behind it. Sometimes it’s hard to put it all together and the temptation is to pick and choose the bits we like most when we don’t see how it all fits together. But here we have to pay attention to Jesus - he’s so clearly underlined this call to forgive for us. How do we resolve the tension?

The best answer I read on this was from a guy named Bruner who used the simple phrase “a consequence not a condition”. He argues that truly taking hold of our own forgiveness inherently leads to releasing the debts of others. We can’t really have grasped the forgiveness we’ve been offered if we’re still hanging on to others’ debts in the light of it. Michael Green, another commentator puts it like this: “if we are to open our hands to receive his gracious pardon, we cannot keep our firsts tightly clenched against those who wrong us”;

I want to bring us back again to something we’ve observed already - even as Jesus double underlines this call to forgive in red in v 14 and 15, he does it speaking to children of the King: v14 “your heavenly father” /15 “your father”. Children of the king will forgive and are forgiven. They are merciful and are shown mercy.

Martin Luther used this connection to help people see their identity as children: He says “when we find ourselves able to forgive others we have evidence that God’s forgiveness is at work in us”, and this should encourage us. Don Carson, another big name, sums up “it is evidence that the grace of God is at work in the forgiving person and that that same grace will bring him forgiveness in due course “ but also “ to fail to forgive others is to demonstrate that one has not felt the saving touch of God”

Jesus is teaching us things here that he expects us to put into practice - he tells us that plainly at the end of his sermon - he expects us to pray this way. He expects us to act in keeping with the prayer. Jesus specifically calling us to forgive others. He expects that because that’s what the king does - and that’s what children of the king do too.

[pause]

I know we’ve spent a lot of time on just a few words - they’re tricky. But as we close, I want to bring us back to the big thing, the main thing we learn from everything we’ve studied today: we daily depend on God for provision - physical and spiritual. And we should remember that daily - by asking for it.

Big idea: remember we daily depend on God for provision - by asking for it

A lot of tricky stuff today so we’re going to take a special approach to questions. The Q+A is open, as usual, hopecityedinburgh.org/qandr - but rather than responding live, and me shooting from the hip, we’ll respond to your questions during the week in the app. We’ll take our time to think about them and get back to you.

What we’re going to do right away is take the opportunity to pray together right now - it just seems the most appropriate response. We’re going to pray this prayer Jesus is teaching us, called the Lord’s prayer, line by line. We’re going to pray a line out loud together when the words come up on screen and then I’ll give you some time to connect with God privately on that same point before we move onto the next one. I’ll lead us into each line as it appears by saying “together”.

So let’s pray. Together.