Forgive Us

Introduction

Twenty five years ago I was a teenager full of bright ideas. My best friend and I were walking around our school’s fall festival. We were going from booth to booth getting SOOO much candy. Somehow, we ended up with a bunch of chem-lights. We snapped a few of them and then we got a bright idea, pun intended. I had a pocket knife, and we sliced the top off some of these chem-lights and started pouring the glowing juice out on the parking lot.

Then, one of us, I can’t remember who, had a weird question… if we swished that juice around in our mouths, would it make our mouths glow? If so, how long would it last? Well, we decided to try it. So we snapped a couple of green chem-lights, I sliced the top of them off, and we poured the liquid in our mouths. I can tell you right now, it definitely makes your mouth glow, but I cannot tell you for how long.

That stuff was absolutely disgusting! It was so bitter. Crazy, right? Obviously, chem-light fluid is not made for your drinking enjoyment...

We both ran back to the main area where we had left our bags of candy. We frantically looked for water to rinse our mouths out, but nothing took away the horrible bitterness. Not coke, not water, not Skittles, NOTHING! Until I reached in my bag and pulled out a Crunch bar. I unwrapped it and stuffed it in my mouth, and very quickly, the taste started to dissipate. After about 3 or 4 Crunch bars, the chem-light taste was all gone. And after stocking back up on Crunch bars, we did it again, this time seeing who could go the longest without trying to get the nasty taste out. We found that if you ate a lot of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups right before you poured the chem-light juice in your mouth, it didn’t taste as bad. It kind of masked that taste for a little while.

We are following the Sermon on the Mount and we have come upon the middle of the sermon where Jesus is teaching His disciples to pray. He does this by way of the Model Prayer. A prayer that is laid out strategically. The strategy is not intended for us to “get what we want” out of prayer, the strategy of this format that Jesus is teaching is so that throughout the course of our prayer we will actually get closer to God and be conformed to the image of His Son.

We remember that before Jesus started teaching this Model Prayer, He immediately preceded it with a couple of warnings: do not make your prayers vain in their repetition; do not be focused on the mechanics of prayer.

And then He goes on to recite what we refer to as the Lord’s Prayer or the Model Prayer. Will you read it along with me?

Matthew 6:9–13 (KJV 1900)

9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11 Give us this day our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

We have learned some important principles of prayer as we have studied this.

We have learned that:

God is our Father

He is good

He is powerful

We are to worship God

We must seek His kingdom

Righteousness

Peace

Joy

Power

We must seek His will

We must fully depend on Him for our needs and wants

I want you to notice how in the first five sections, our focus has been on God the Father.

Our Father

Hallowed be Thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

Give us this day our daily bread

Everything has been a placed in a strategic sequence and form.

We start by acknowledging who God is to us - our Father. We follow that by praising His name and who He is. Then, we focus on his plans for us - to develop within us and make us representatives of righteousness, joy, peace, and power that comes through the Holy Spirit. Then, we ask for His will to be done in our lives and in this world. We hold our plans and dreams and goals out to Him with open hands, allowing Him to freely change, add, or takeaway from those things.

And all this allows us to what could be the most selfish part of prayer to be something beautiful instead. Because of this sequence, instead of approaching God selfishly with our wants and needs as if He were a genie or an ATM or vending machine, now we approach God the Father with trust and and with the understanding that has been fostered by our praise to Him for His greatness and goodness. Our requests are made with an open hand, seeking not our betterment, but the benefit of His kingdom.

I hope that you are learning to be deliberate and intentional in your prayers. Don’t just throw a prayer out there flippantly; think about what you are saying, but more importantly, think about whose presence you are in.

And now, as we get into verse 12

Matthew 6:12 KJV 1900

12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

we change focus a little.

The Strategy of the Placement

I often wondered why confession of sin is done toward the end of this prayer. Why not start with it? I was, of course, taught that whenever we pray we are supposed to confess all of our sins first so that God will listen to the rest of our prayer. How is moving this toward the end of the prayer a good strategy if I am trying to be more like Jesus or get closer to God?

Well, lets take a look, and I am going to see if I can illustrate it in these slides for you as we go.

When we approach God in prayer, we come just as we are with everything that is going on in our minds and in our world. It may be a bright, sunshiny day, it may have clouds, and some days those clouds are dark. But we come to God, because we wish to fellowship with Him in prayer.

And as we look to God as our Father we begin to contemplate what that means. He’s good, He’s perfect, He’s in control, He cares for me, He loves me. And as we start to contemplate the Lord as our heavenly Father,

He begins to shine brighter than the darkest cloud in our atmosphere.

Soon, our the awareness of how bad the day is going, how good the day is going, and even about the day itself begins to fade away.

As we begin to hallow His name and worship Him, we come to remember His character and all that He is. He is the Creator, He is Love, He is Mercy, He gives grace. He is Jehovah-jireh, the Lord who provides. He is the Lord most high. He is the Lord our shepherd.

As we contemplate on who He is, our focus grows toward Him. We realize that we have come into the presence, not only of an all-powerful, loving Father, but of the Holy God of the universe, and everything else fades away, much like the song we sing, Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus says, “And the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the sight of His glory and grace.” At this point in our prayer there is nothing left but contemplating the greatness of God.

We praise God during this time. Praise Him with uplifted hands and voices, we praise Him with open hearts. We praise Him with shouts and with music.

And sometimes, we find ourselves coming to God broken barely able to stand, but still praising Him on bended knee.

We understand that He is God and we are His children. But we are created and saved for a purpose: to be salt and light upon this earth and live as citizens of His kingdom.

So we are submitted to Him, asking for His will to be done in our lives. Submitting to Him while we ask Him to take our needs along with our wants and our plans, and giving them to Him so that He can supply them or get rid of them as He sees fit.

And this whole time, we’ve been focused on God. We have been praising Him, asking for His character to flow through us as we live life. We have sought His will and acknowledged Him as King, and we have affirmed our total dependence on Him. And after all that, after taking this time to bask in the presence of God, now, with this next part of the Model Prayer, we turn our eyes inward.

We take a look at ourselves and realize how imperfect we are, how short we fall every day. And after basking in the glory of who God is, we can now finally see ourselves and see our sin in stark contrast to God’s holiness.

It is at this point that Jesus teaches His disciples to look inward and confess sin. This same prayer that Jesus teaches to His disciples on another occasion that is recorded by Luke, Jesus says that we must pray, “Forgive us our sins as we for give those who sin against us.” Here in Matthew, the word used is debts, and it refers to a fault or a moral debt, as the debt incurred by all sin.

Like I said before, it used to surprise me that Jesus didn’t start the prayer with this section - confessing sin. Instead, He waits until almost the very end, and He did this very intentionally.

It is now, at this sixth portion of the model prayer, that we can look at our sin and see the gravity of our sin. Placed at the beginning, we would be tempted to say something like this:

“Our Father which art in heaven, forgive me of my sins. I know that the way I spoke to my children earlier today was wrong. I flew off the handle, and even said some choice words that were not right. I let my temper get the best of me instead of demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit. But, Lord, you know how those kids can really push my buttons. They talk-back, they disobey, they are disrespectful, and they try to walk all over me. All things considered, I think I handled it alright. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.

“And that lie I told today at my job about having a flat tire, I know that was wrong, too, and that I shouldn’t lie, so please forgive me for that. But God, had I been late one more time I would have been written up, and that excuse bought me some leniency. Those bosses aren’t merciful and gracious like you are. Speaking of mercy and grace, right now I’d like to take a moment to praise you...”

Can you see how this approach to sin is not a right approach? It’s flippant, it’s disrespectful to God’s character and to the sacrifice that He paid for our sin. God the Father hates sin so much that He was willing to send His perfect, only begotten Son, Jesus, to die on the cross and to suffer His wrath. God hates sin so much and loved us so much that the Bible says in Isaiah 53 that, “It pleased the Lord to bruise him...” That seems harsh, and while I do not think that God was smiling as Jesu suffered his wrath and the torture upon the cross, certainly, it pleased God that Jesu was going through this.

As a father, I do not like to see my children suffer. I don’t like to see them have a hard time and struggle. I do not like when they have hard days, lots of homework, or workloads that consume their whole day. But at the same time, it pleases me when they go through that. The reason is because I know the outcome. I know that they will be better suited for life if they learn to work hard, figure out their problems, learn how to manage their time, and get used to dealing with hard situations. I can’t step in to bail them out at every problem. Sometimes, you have to let your kids fail so that in failure they learn valuable life lessons. I love them; I don’t ever want my children to go through these things, but I know that when they do go through these things the right way and learn the right things, they will be all the better for it, and so will there future families.

So it pleased the Father to bruise the Son. It pleased Him because God would receive the glory. It pleased Him because it would mean the eradication of sin in all those that would believe in the Son. It pleased the Father because after this, Jesus would be highly exalted, and His name would be the name above all names. It pleased God because through this sacrifice, humanity, God’s crowning creation, would be able to be reconciled with Him once more, and He would adopt all those believers as children.

So when we approach God to confess our sins and we make excuses for it, it is a slap in His face that we do not consider the gravity of our sin.

And if we do not take time to focus on God first, then we run the risk of having less sensitivity to our sin. It turns out much like the story of the chem-lights. Coat your mouth with peanut butter, and you don’t taste the chem-light juice as bad. Oh, I realized that it tasted bad, but when I ate the Reese’s, I didn’t mind it as much. And there are times that we are so full of the world and so influenced by the world because we live in the world that the sin that is in our life doesn’t taste or look quite so bad as it should.

So Jesus takes us through this sequence that focuses our hearts completely on the Father, then we take a look at ourselves, and what do we see?

We see the darkness of our sin in contrast with God’s purity, authority, sovereignty, and majesty.

Anybody here ever been to Bath & Bodyworks? It’s a great store; Tahsha really likes it, and I’ve found somethings there that I like as well. If you have never been, when you walk in you are greeted by a kaleidoscope of smells. Perfumes, deodorants, body washes, lotions, candles, hand sanitizers, face scrubs, air fresheners, and all sorts of other things. To better be able to distinguish these smells and pick out your flavor of body wash or lotion, there are little tester strips of paper. You spray the perfume or body spray on a strip of paper and bring that to your nostrils and inhale, and you can smell that particular scent better. But after a while, the smells all seem to start to smell the same. Sometimes, I can’t tell the difference between one soap and the next, and I have found that in that case, I just need to step away from the smells, walk outside a little, let my nose rest for a second, then come back to seeing what things smell like.

The whole sequence of the Model Prayer up to this point has been like a spiritual palette cleanse from our world and our lives. When we begin to pray, we have the taste of the world in our mouth, its disappointments, its harshness, and even its versions of joy and fulfillment. Our approach to the Father and our praise to Him act as a kind of palette cleanser from the world’s flavors that are so potent. We get a taste of His glory, His kingdom. Then we give Him our wants and needs, still savoring the wonder of His provision and foresight as we ask for His will to be done and His reign in our lives, and His provision for our day.

Then we move onto the next course. Where before, the flavor of our sin may have been tempered by the philosophies of this world we live in or the darkness of the day that we have just experienced, now, with a clean palette, we savor the absolute disgust that is our sin. There is nothing there to mask the flavor anymore. What once was thought to be pleasurable, is no longer so. What was once thought to not taste so bad, now is disgusting. We taste the foulness of our trespasses; we can fully grasp the noxious fumes of our iniquities, and we can see the darkness of the sin within us contrasted with light of God’s holiness.

And when we see, taste, and smell the ugliness of our sin in comparison to God’s holiness, there are no more excuses, there are no more attempts at reasoning away our sins; there is simply confession. This experience here is what helps us to mourn over our sin. This experience in prayer is what helps us to thirst and hunger after righteousness.

When we do not follow the sequence that Jesus laid out for us for our prayer time, when it comes to dealing with sin, we fall into one of three traps:

We forget about it altogether. But when we have a sequence planned out, our self-examination and our confession becomes intentional.

We deal with sin too quickly and casually (e.g.: "Father forgive me for all my sins today, in Jesus name, amen." ✅ "Now on to the rest of my day.")

We deal with our sin in fear.

Don’t get me wrong, there should be a deep reverence for who God is and a deep respect for Him. We should fear sin and its consequences, but remember how we are approaching God, as our heavenly Father.

When we approach God in this section of our prayer, we approach Him respectfully, but knowing that our Father sits on a throne of GRACE. Knowing that He is love and He is forgives. This confession of sin is meant to be prompted by God's deep love for us and our deep love for Him.

It is this that will drive us to be specific. How many of y'all have ever done laundry by hand? What I mean is that you took, with your hands, pieces of clothing individually, dunked them in soapy water, and scrubbed them on a washboard or a wash stone.

I have had to do that occasionally growing up. Not fun. But this is what sin confession needs to look like. Oh, it might sound eloquent to say the words, "Father, forgive me wherein I have sinned against thee." But that does nothing. It is like taking a load of clothes to a creek, dunking them all in at once, taking them out, and expecting them to be clean.

What brings real conviction into my heart is when, after looking upon a Father who loves me so deeply and cares for me so much and is so wise that He orchestrates things around me for my good, I go to Him and say, "Father, forgive me because yesterday I lost my temper with my son." And as I speak to Him about this sin, I come to the realization that He is my Father and despite all the things that I have done that are an affront to Him, He has never lost His temper with me.

"Father, forgive me for being selfish and not taking the time to minister to others," is a very specific thing when I bring it to Him, I can think of all the ways that Jesus humbled Himself to become a servant even though He is God.

The Effects of Confessing Sin

And as I confess sin specifically after being in His presence, I am deeply convicted and at the same time deeply relieved because I know His promise: If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Forgiveness

So our first effect is Forgiveness. 1 John 1:9

1 John 1:9 KJV 1900

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

And this is where that second Beatitude comes into play and how it makes us happy: Blessed are they which mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Happiness

Immediately after tasting the bitterness of my sin and then confessing it, happiness and relief fill my soul knowing that he has forgiven and cleaned me from that sin.

And I can rest in the assurance that I have come into the throne room of my Father and left with an overabundance of mercy and grace.

And this is a point into which we need to move slowly and deliberately. This is not the time to rush our prayer, because this is the time where we need God to deal with us.

Job 34:32 says

Job 34:32 KJV 1900

32 That which I see not teach thou me: If I have done iniquity, I will do no more.

This is in reference to having sins which we may not remember or even realize that they were sins. We need to ask God, like David did, to search us and know our hearts and see if there is any wicked way in us - sins that have gone unconfessed, sins that we have not realized were sins.

There is another effect of confessing our sins to God that is sometimes downplayed or forgotten altogether.

1 John 1:7 is very revealing about this.

1 John 1:7 KJV 1900

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Unity

Confession of sin and a walk with God that constantly deals with the sin in our lives causes us to have unity, fellowship with other believers.

1 John 1:7 KJV 1900

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

That “one with another” is not in reference to having fellowship with God, it is having fellowship with other Christians who are also walking in the light. We all come from different backgrounds, but if we see ourselves as spokes of a wheel, despite the fact that they all begin in a different part, they all converge in one place and that is the hub who would be Jesus in this case. When we have fellowship with each other in Christ, it is easier to stay clean. Conversely, when we have sin in our lives, one of the first things we do is distance ourselves from those that are walking closely with Jesus. It is hard to come to church while you are actively in sin and rebellion.

I heard a pastor once say this: Satan is not a good father to his own family. He hates his children and doesn't treat them right. He absolutely detests anyone from God's family, but when we go to hang out with those of his family, he will try to steal your joy and try to destroy everything there is about you as quickly as he can.

The worst thing that you can do when you are in sin is to get out of church. I hope that everyone here is of this mindset: that we understand that eventually, all of us will struggle with a wide range of sins. Not one person is above that; not one person here is sinless. So when a brother or sister in Christ is found to be in sin, then we understand that they need to be surrounded by graceful encouragement and prayer, and truth must be spoken into their lives with love. Those struggling and those fallen must realize that this is a place where they can come and not get beat down more, but get help as they get back on their feet and back to their walk with God.

Listen, if you are struggling with alcoholism, I want you here.

If you are struggling with addiction, you need to be here.

If you have a rotten temper, this is the place you need to be.

If you are the quintessential complainer and are never in a good mood, you need to be in church.

If you struggle with pornography, this is the place for you.

If you struggle with pride and go through life with the thought that everyone else is beneath you, this is the place for you.

If you are having marital problems, this church is the place you need to be.

WHY? Because this is meant to be a refuge. A house of prayer. A place where those that are strong in their walk can help those that are stumbling in their faith with meekness and love. This needs to be a place that we can be honest with each other, help each other, pray for each other, rejoice with each other, cry with each other, support each other, and impact each other for the cause of Christ.

And when you start dealing honestly with your sin on a daily basis with God, you will find yourself more and more attached to the people here that are doing the same thing.

Invitation

With heads bowed and eyes closed, we are going to have a moment of invitation. I’ll ask that no one be looking or talking right now.

When was the last time you took sin seriously? When was the last time that you confessed sin to God? Is there sin in your life now that has gone unconfessed? Are you trying to hide it, much like David tried to hide his sin before God? I hope that you remember the verse in Proverbs that says, “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”

Deal honestly with your sin. Bring it before your Holey heavenly Father. Taste the bitterness of it as you confess it to Him, and then experience the forgiveness and the cleansing that only He can offer.

Is there anyone here this morning that would say, “Bro. Mike, there is sin in my life, and I need to deal with that today, would you pray for me as I deal with God about my sin?”

Maybe you are here and you do not know God as your heavenly Father. Let me tell you something, He knew, before the creation of the world, He knew the sins that you would commit. And before sin had ever entered into this world, He had a plan to cleanse you of your sin. That plan was Jesus. Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, perfect, because He is one with God, came to earth, experienced life as a human being, lived a sinless life, and then died on a cross for your sin and mine.

The Bible clearly tells us that the wages of sin is death, and it can only be paid for by blood. Jesus died a death He did not deserve, because He wanted to pay the debt that you and I could never finish paying, no, not with an eternity in a lake of fire. Today, He wants you to know that He is offering a gift of salvation to you. God wants to adopt you into His family. And He let us know how to experience forgiveness, redemption, and adoption in His word. If you are here this morning and do not know Jesus as your savior but would like to, would you raise your hand and put it right back down?

I would love to talk to you after the service and set up a time we can look at what the Bible has to say about being saved.

Is there anyone like that?

Life Groups

What, if anything, stood out to you about this sermon?

Does the study of the structure of the Model Prayer change the way we view prayer?

Why do we tend to downplay or excuse our sin in prayer, and how does focusing on God's holiness help us confront the reality of our sin?

What role does confession play in making us more sensitive to our sin?

Why is it essential to confess sin specifically, rather than in general terms?

Why is it important to take time in prayer to reflect on the depths of God's grace and mercy before confessing our sins?

How does the forgiveness we receive through confession bring both personal peace and unity with other believers?

After all we have seen with the Model Prayer, have there been any changes that you have implemented in your daily prayer life, or are there any that you need to implement?