Prayer And Personal Relationships 02/21/21

Well, welcome to New Grace Baptist Church. This is Pastor Mike and it is Sunday. And this is our sermon for this week and we'd like to welcome you and I'm glad you could be here. Hope everyone had a good week and everyone is doing well. We going to continue in our Series this morning power praying. And of course, we are studying The Lord's Prayer and today's sermon. I've been titled prayer and personal relationships and what we going to talk about the day is the importance of forgiveness, and we come to our next verse today. We're kind of taking this phrase by phrase. And so we're going to be in Matthew 6 verse 12. So if you have your Bibles, you can follow along. I'm going to go ahead and read Matthew 6 and we'll just read the entire thing verses 9 through 13. And this is Jesus speaking. He says in this manner therefore pray Our Father in heaven Hallowed be your name. And so here we see how we are to honor God and to honor his name then University in your kingdom. Come your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. So we are to pray for the priorities of God, which would be his will and his kingdom but then last week we looked at verse 11, give us this day our daily bread and we talked about praying for our provision and we talked about 4 dangers that we can fall into if we don't pray for our daily needs the danger of Pride and selfishness and worry and materialism. And then today we come to verse 12 and the Bible says and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors probably kind of sound strange and our culture to hear someone say forgive us our debts and As we forgive our debtors Probably sounds like it's from another planet too many people Simon wiesenthal he was a Jew who suffered in the Nazi concentration camps for years and he told a story that kind of will cause us to reflect on what Jesus is saying right here. He wrote a book it was the title of it was the sunflower and he tells of being forced to work in a Nazi hospital and being dragged upstairs one afternoon to talk to a wounded German Soldier actually the soldier had suffered up like a severe head trauma and he was dying and this soldiers German Soldier ask to speak to a Jew And wiesenthal went in the room with him and he told wiesenthal that during the fight and he had been ordered to fill up a house with about two hundred Jews and then set the house on fire and he was told anyone who tries to escape just shoot them on the spot. Well, he was kind of horny by the fact that a man with a baby in his arms. It's closed already on fire had appeared at a window and he covered the child's eye and he broke the window and he leaped out of the house while this soldier that was lying here on his deathbed had fired shots and killed the man and the little baby and now is he was laying on his deathbed. He was just haunted by this memory and he wanted to talk to a Jew you so that he could ask for forgiveness because he wanted to die in peace well wiesenthal listen to him. and then after he listened to what he said was install stood up and left a room without saying a word and so that Soldier would have to meet God without gaining the Forgiveness of any Jew and you see if that's a hard story and it's kind of a strange book because wiesenthal asked the question, what would you have done and all the chapters of his book our essays by other people talking about whether or not they would have offered forgiveness to the soldier and it's kind of a book on the nature of forgiveness and it just kind of gives you a look at the terrible look into the heart of man and you know, sometimes forgiveness seems unfair we've all known people who've done terrible things and you know, there's been me and who have Suffered and tried to climb the corporate ladder and and let their family and wife and children just go and maybe one day just leaving them from another woman or you've had mothers that come in one day and just leave and leave the husband there with the children to take care of them. You know, we know people who have used others just in Despicable ways. And then after using on they just toss them away like an old rag or something. Sometimes it isn't fair. It doesn't seem like for some people to be forgiven in other words, you know, we saying what they ought to pay for what they've done but then we come to Jesus's words here. And he says forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and sometimes forgiveness is tough and our Lord Tales of that every day in our prayers that we are to deal with the issue of forgiving others. You see we start a prayer time with praise is Halloween his name and then we pray about his priorities to his kingdom in his will then we pray about our daily needs our Provisions, but then we are to pray about our personal relationship. Yes, interesting that Jesus moves from give us to forgive us verse 11 was give us this day our daily bread and verse 12 begins forgive us of our debts. So when I read this, the first thing that comes to mind is that we need to daily cleanse ourselves before God we need to be reminded that the world in which we live in is falling and that Old nature, you know, it is bent towards sin matter fact the word debt right here. It actually means sins or trespasses and in a sense it it has the the meaning of Tours to release something or someone. So Christ is talkin about are falling this here. He is instructing us to ask forgiveness for sins on a daily basis. Now, we know that forgiveness is rarely mentioned in our culture and if that's the case in is even mentioned last night was a secular psychologist. His name was Karl menninger and he wrote a book whatever became of seeing years ago and he wrote in that book that the last time that there was a public mention of Sin from a leader of the United States and he was talking about a president was in 1953 when President Eisenhower quoted Abraham Lincoln To encourage people to confess their sins and transgressions in Humble sorrow, well, no one wants to admit seeing any more but we should start each day by remembering that we have to deal with our sinful nature. Now we can make a case here in the Lord's prayer that this verse verse 12. It may be one of the most important in the whole prayer because it's the only phrase repeated for emphasis by the Lord. You see after his instruction instructing his followers here to ask for forgiveness for the scenes after the Lord's Prayers over when he says amen. He goes right back to this and I'll look at it here in the next verse. He says don't lead us into temptation deliver Steve one for yours is Jean on the power and the glory forever. Amen. So the the prayer is over, but look at the next to versus he goes right back to verse 12 he says for if you forgive men their trespasses your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive me and their trespasses neither will your father forgive your trespasses as well? So he goes on the first 14 15 to revisit this this verse here. So I think Jesus felt this topic was so important. He came back to offer a feather commentary on it if we do not forgive others. We will not know God's forgiveness now. Why is that so well, he said that not because God wants us to earn his forgiveness. Some people read this verse say, oh, okay. Well if he won't if I forgive somebody that he'll forgive me. I need to earn his forgiveness. Oh, no, it's not about earning for Guinness. We can never earn any of God's favors, but it's simply because we cannot truly ask for forgiveness. Unless our heart is Right regarding other people in our relationship. You know, God doesn't work by halves. He's not going to allow us to come to him confessing half-ass in while hanging on to the other half. In other words. It has to be all or nothing you see God forgives only the penitent and that one and one of the chief evidence is of troop in is a forgiving spirit. And that is what Jesus is talking about here. This is a powerful statement and it has a lot of theological ramifications. If you remember earlier, the Lord had said this and Matthew chapter 5 verse 44. He says what I say to you love your enemies bless those who curse you do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you now how hard is that? You see when we offer forgiveness to others people look at us and they recognize us as God's people. You see they see the character God within us remember what Paul said to the Ephesians and this says in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 32, he says and be kind to one another tenderhearted forgiving one another even as God in Christ forgave you so forgiveness is not an Evidence of weakness, but it's the evidence of strength And remember when Jesus wanted his followers to understand the importance of forgiveness. You remember he had Matthew 18, we won't go there and look at it. But he told about a servant who owed of a lot of money to a King matter fact, he owed more than he could ever pay back in his life lifetime, but he has to King if you would have patience and I will try to pay you back. Well, if you think about it, if you calculate up how much I owe this man would have had to have work 6 days a week for a hundred and ninety years to pay you back this debt, but still the King was moved with compassion and he forgave that man his death you see in that story. The king is a metaphor for God and we are God's servants and because of our sins, we owed a debt that we can never repay yet God and his love and his mercy and he's Grace. He forgives us our debt. Well the story didn't stop there. If you remember the servant was let out of prison. He went outside and found. Gentleman that I told him just a miniscule amount. And he started threatening this man say another. Can you pay me what you owe? If not, I'm going to put you in prison. Well other servants heard that went back to the king and the king called him back in and said you Wicked servant. He said I forgave you all your dad because you begged me. He's in the he said shouldn't you have compassion on your other servants as I had compassion on you and then the king had him thrown back in prison. You see if we want to experience the Forgiveness of God, we have to forgive others and that has to be part of our daily prayer time. If we cannot forgive people we're not going to experience God's forgiveness. See God is not going to put up with a forgiving Center refusing to forgive someone else. So as we look at the words here forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. I want to give you four truths today that I find. These words here and the first truth is simply this and let's preface all these was with we are to forgive and number one is we are to forgive because we have been forgiven. You see when we understand how much we've been forgiven. Then we are set free to forgive others and I sink and Christ purpose here in this extra commentary and verses 14 and 15. He wants us to remember that we have been forgiven much and so if we reflect on that and then consider God's Great forgiveness for our sin, then we start to get a better perspective on how we can forgive others. You see when when we remember our own sin in the fact that God has wiped it away. It's much easier to forgive someone else for sinning. Against us and once our eyes have been opened to see the you know, the enormity if you we love our offense against God and then the injuries that others have done to us all of a sudden they'll start appearing to be very small, but it's on the other hand. We have an exaggerated view of the offense of others if we just blow it up and make a big deal out of that only shows that we have minimized our own sin and we don't understand how much we have been forgiven. So we are to forgive because we have been forgiven number two. We are to forgive. Just as we have been forgiven. Now. How did God forgive us? When he forgave us of our seeing he gave up he forgave us unconditionally. Peace. He's not asking for anything more for me from us. We are clean in his eyes. He forgave us freely and he forgave us completely. God doesn't say well I'll forgive you but I won't forget it. You know, sometimes we made someone may wrong us will say okay, I forgive you but I'm never going to forget that I'll always keep that in my mind. I know how you are. We'll see that's not how God is the Bible says that when he forgave us our sins that they were cast in the deepest part of the sea, and now they are gone and friends there may be someone that has wronged you and you've been holding this in for years and years and years. What you need to do is you need to take that anger and resentment and you need to go out there behind your house and throw it in that pie. On and just let it sink to the bottom. And before you leave we need to put up a no fishing sign. So no one will ever drag that send back up again. You see that's what God has done. He had just cast all of our sin out into the deepest part of the sea matter fact, the Bible says as far as the East is from the West he has cast our sins from us, they are gone and we are completely and unconditionally forgiven in friends when we forgive others. We are to forgive them the same way just as we have been forgiven and number three we are to forgive. In order to be forgiven, and I know that this is probably a hard truth here, but it's one that Jesus makes several times in scripture. When we accepted Jesus Christ something happened in heaven. Now what happened was the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross was applied to our account and other words when we accepted Christ, we were declared righteous and just our sins were transferred to Jesus and his righteousness was transferred to us. Now. That was a good trade what that we traded. Jesus are seeing and he traded us he is righteousness and when God looks at us he sees us as righteous and holy in Christ in spite of what we do or how much we send God knows that the penalty for our sins has been paid at one point in time the time that we were safe. We were declared just If I we were declared not guilty now we didn't have any right to this. Of course. This was just God's mercy and because of his grace he declared us righteous and other words. We are judicially forgiven, but now that we have been judicially forgiven and we can't lose our Salvation. God is always going to be our father once we're saying we're always a son or a daughter. He's always Our Father no matter what we do. We can't lose our salvation. But now that we've been saved we have a duty toward relational forgiveness. Now, this was kind of illustrating John Chapter 13. Remember when Jesus washes disciples feet he wanted them to realize that salvation is to the soul. What a bath is to the body, you know, when we take a shower we take a bath we become clean and then when we commit Our Lives to Christ our souls become clean And but just when if we you do go out in summertime barefooted we walk around in the dirt I feet get dirty again. Well, we have to we have to take pause once in a while and we have to clean our feet well by the same token when we Sin, we have to stop daily the Lord says and make sure that our souls are clean before the Lord. We may be judicially clean before God, but we want to be relationally clean also by asking his forgiveness for any recent send that maybe in our life. So that's looking example, let's just say if you remember when you were young and maybe your parents told you, you know, not to play ball in the backyard. So close to the house or maybe you were like a young teenager in 13 14 15 year old your mom and dad said, you know, and I don't you jump in this car and take off somewhere. You're not old enough to drive. And sure enough you're playing in the backyard one day and you you hit a baseball when you break out the kitchen window or your mom and dad's gone one day and you just happen to think I know where the keys are. I want to take this car for spend and I was listening to a gentleman tell the story when he was a young teenager and he took his car off and his parents were not there and he happened to try to spin a tire or something on a dirt road and he got turned sideways and he went into the ditch and just damage the whole right side of the car and he took it home and his parents what they are when they got home is dad walked in the house. He said you do that and he said yeah, I did it and he said his dad didn't say a word didn't say a word at dinner that night didn't say a word to him the next morning at breakfast and finally, he said I had to go to him and he said that I was wrong. I was deceitful. I was dishonest I knew better to do that, but I'm sorry and I want to ask you to forgive. And his dad replied where you're forgiven, but you going to have to pay for the car. You see when he wrecked that car. He didn't cease to be. That Dad son or the day I didn't cease to be his father his judicial relationship with him was not in jeopardy but his fellowship with his father was what was damn and he had to go to him and make things right and that's what Jesus is talking about here in Matthew 6. If you want to experience the Oneness with God and field and incense the reality of forgiveness When you pray friends, you can't hold grudges against other people. You can't hold onto deaths against another and then come to God and ask for forgiveness for your own since you see if we want to experience forgiveness. Then we must forgive those who have wronged us. And the only way to to heal this emotional pain is to forgive you see forgiveness will stop the re-run of paint if someone's ever done anything to you and you've never made it ride or they'd never made it right? You probably sit around and think about that a lot and you just kind of do a rerun of the pain in your mind and but forgiveness for giving them it will heal our memory and when you release a wrong door and again, that's what that word. That means it means to release and that's what Christ did when we were saved. He released us from the penalty of our sin and gave us Christ righteousness. And so it's like setting a prisoner free you're free. You're free to Thinkin you're free to live again at the end of World War II theologian. Reinhold niebuhr said this he said we must finally be reconciled to our foe lest. We perish in the Vicious Cycle of hatred and Friends one of the most important things that we can learn to do in her life. And that is to learn to forgive others. Well what we said so far we are to forgive because we have been forgiven. We are to forgive just as we have been forgiven, which is unconditionally and we are to forgive in order to be forgiven. And then lastly I want to say this in point for we are to forgive. Before we need to be forgiven. You say well, what do you mean by that? Well when you pray Tell the Lord that you know. That at some point in your life, you're going to be hurt somebody who means something to you a clothes and maybe a spouse a child a parent a good friend soon or later that person at some point in time will hurt you and you can count on it happening sometime in your future and tell the Lord that Lord when it happens help me to forgive them before it ever happens. Just go ahead and say Lord help me to forgive them. That way you forgiven them. Even before it happens. You're you're prepared for you have build a foundation of a forgiving spirit and if we can keep in mind the incredible debt, which has been paid on our behalf will find it much easier to forgive others when they hurt us on a tell you a story here. Donald grey barnhouse use a pastor preacher in a he taught at a seminary he knew a gentleman that that before he was married. He had lived a life of great seeing and committed adultery and fornication and but yet after that he had been converted and eventually this man had come into tamaria a fine Christian woman and he had told this woman even before they were married and afterwards that about his past and about how you know, the Temptation was so strong front for him when it comes to sexual immorality. And when he told her this these things this is what his wife said that the wife had kind of taken his head in her hands and it kind of drawn him onto her shoulder. And this is what she said. I wrote this now. She said John I want you to understand something very plainly. I know my Bible well and therefore I know the subtlety of sin and the devices of seeing working in the human heart. I know you are a thoroughly converted man John, but I know that you still have an old nature and that you are not yet as fully instructed in the ways of God as you soon will be the devil will do all he can to wreck your Christian Life and he will see to it that Temptations of every time will be put in your way the day might come and I hope it never does when you will succumb to Temptation and fall into sin. Immediately the devil will tell you that it is no use trying that you might as well continue on your way and sin and that above all you are not to tell me because it will hurt me so much and then she said this but John I want you to know that here in my arms is your home when I married you I married your old nature as well as your new nature and I want you to know there is full pardon and forgiveness in advance for any evil that may ever come into your life. And he said the gentleman looked at him and said my God, he said if anything could ever keep a man straight that would be it and he said he'd been married to her for over 35 years and it always been faithful to her. You see the Lord says this concerning our sins if we confess our sins. He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all. Unrighteousness and then into versus later. He says this he says I have told you these things so you might not send and if anyone sins he has an advocate with the father Jesus Christ the righteous you see because of what God has done for us. It ought to keep us from sinning we ought to use God's grace and how much he loved us to live a life. That is pleasing for him. Some people. Use God's grace as a license to sin because they'll say what hey you live the way you want to because if you ask for forgiveness, God will forgive you befriend. The reason Christ gave us this teaching about forgiving others is so that we would not send but if we do we have an advocate so his grace his Mercy what he's done for us that should compel us to live a Godly knife. Not a life of sin, so These are the four truths we are to forgive because we have been forgiven. We are to forgive just as we have been forgiven condition unconditional we are to forgive in order to be forgiven and lastly we are to get to forgive before we need to be forgiven. Well, I want to give you here and I'm not going to take long talking about this. I want to give you the four Promises of forgiveness and you see him here on the screen and I probably giving you these before but they are so important what this is is when Someone has wronged you. And and they come to you and ask for for forgiveness and you've been hurt terribly. And you say what I will forgive you. This is what you are saying. These are the four Promises of biblical forgiveness that you are saying when you tell someone I forgive you I look at number one when you tell someone I forgive you what you're saying is I will not dwell on this incident you're telling this person. I'm not going to sit at home and still over it. I'm not going to roll it over in my mind night after night after night because if you do you going to be anger you going to be bitter and you going to be resentful when you truly forgive someone just like Christ has forgiven us. We will not dwell on that incident anymore number to when you forgive someone you you tell them this you promise them this I will not use this incident against you not what that is is you probably known people before in your life. Maybe where maybe you did something in to them and maybe 5 10 15 20 years later. They bring it up. They throw it up in your face. Every time you have a disagreement or something. Well that just shows that they have not forgiven you completely because they use that incident as leverage. They use it against you friends. When you tell someone that you forgive them. You will never bring that incident up again and use that against them because that's not unconditional forgiveness that's conditional forgiveness. So I will not dwell on this incident. I will not use this incident against you number three I will not talk to others about this incident many times people someone to do something. The first thing they want to do is get on the phone and call someone and say you know what so and so did to me. I can't believe they did that Fringe when you tell someone I forgive you. You're not going to get on the phone or you're not going to send a text or an email to somebody and start talking bad about that person for what they did. They have been forgiven. Remember that sin should be as far as the East is from the West. Send you put in the bottom of your phone and you put a no fishing sign there and you're never going to bring that up again and then number for I will not let this hinder our relationship. Do you know many times when people have a falling-out they all avoid one another that may not talk, you know, there's parents and children that go for years and never speak a word to each other. But when someone does something to us and we say I forgive you what you're saying is I'm not going to let this incident hinder our relationship. I'm not going to avoid you I'm not going to talk about you. I'm not going to kind of be standoffish. I'm just going to put this behind us and we going to be reconciled and we're going to have the same relationship that we had before this incident friends. That's what Biblical forgiveness is all about right here. Now you see God has given us full provision in advance for every sin that may ever come into our life and he's done that precisely to keep us from sinning as I read a while ago. Don't forget that there is nothing in you that can ever astonish God or take him by surprise. He knows what you are. And he has recommended his love to you on the basis of the fact that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. So friends just understand this God loves to forgive us and he loves it when we forgive others now, maybe there's someone today that you need to forgive. If so take the time right now. Write him a letter Cinema text or faith message. I'm on Facebook make a phone call or go see him in person and just remember what God has already done for you and how he has forgiven you and then in that power in the spirit of Truth you go extend that forgiveness to others and this is what Jesus is talking about when he says forgive us our debts as we forgive those friends. That's exactly what we need to do. We need to forgive others. And if not, it will be a hindrance in our walk with the Lord forgive us our debts as we forgive. Are debtors well, thank you for being here today, and I know that this message here. Sometimes can be a little sticky stick lie to us and all but forgiveness is so important so important that Jesus talked about it twice here right in the Lord's Prayer, and then the following two verses after it. Well, I hope everyone has a great rest of the weekend, and we will see you Wednesday night on our Zoom meeting as we continue talking about how to develop a powerful prayer life and this Wednesday night. We going to look at how we are to confess and repent of our sins when we come to God In Prayer. Well, I hope everyone has a great week and we will see you again next Sunday.