2022.04.24 Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?
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· 1 viewIf you don't forgive others, God will not forgive you.
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Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?
Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?
Matthew 6:9–14 • John 20:19–25
How many times have you looked at a passage of Scripture, and something new leaps off the page? It doesn’t matter if you’ve looked at a passage once or twice, or a million times: God can reveal something you never noticed.
Today's first reading is likely VERY familiar to us … perhaps even one of the most familiar passages on the planet! What Christian alive doesn’t know the Lord’s Prayer?
When Annette and I were youth pastors, we led the youth through an exercise I would recommend you do at some point:
We took the Lord’s prayer, phrase by phrase and rewrote it with words they would ordinarily use. Tell me, how many of you use the word “hallowed” outside of praying this prayer?
I don’t remember the entire end product, but I remember it began,
Whatup, God? Your name is raw!
That language is dated enough it sounds weird today … but the language of this prayer is also dated. Might I suggest this exercise may help you recapture what the prayer is actually saying instead of just repeating words you’ve memorized like a phone number.
The title of today’s message is “Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?” I would suggest that what is missed most often in this prayer is caused in part because of the way we say it.
Returning to phone numbers: if I asked you for your phone number, how would you say it to me? Would you say all of the numbers altogether? No. You’d give 3 digits for the area code first — pause — three digits for the exchange — pause — four digits for your specific line. Just like your Social Security number … nobody gives 9 digits without a breath. They give 3 digits — pause — 2 digits — pause 4 digits.
We pause at key moments, and when we say something like the Lord’s prayer week-after-week, we soon start pausing at the same place because it makes it easier to say together.
Let’s look at those pauses just a second:
Our Father — pause
who art in heaven — pause
hallowed be thy name — pause
Thy kingdom come — pause
thy will be done — pause
on earth as it is in heaven — pause
Give us this day our daily bread — pause
and forgive us our trespasses — pause
as we forgive those who trespass against us
And that’s where I want to stop.
Here’s how we typically say this line:
forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us
If you’ve noticed, when I’m leading the Lord’s prayer, if I’m really paying attention to what I’m saying … I don’t take the pause in between those phrases.
I think the pause has allowed us to believe these two phrases are separate statements … but they aren’t. “As we forgive those who trespass against us” doesn’t make sense without another phrase connected.
Here’s what was intended in this prayer:
forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us
If we rewrite this phrase, we’d likely change “trespasses” and many versions have done just that to “debts” or “sins” or even “offenses”.
For the sake of clarity, I’m going to use “harm”:
forgive us the harm we’ve caused, as we forgive those who harmed us
For the sake of recapturing the connection, I’m going to change “as”:
forgive us the harm we’ve caused, in the same way we forgive those who harmed us
Now, the connecting word “as” has several different uses and meanings. So how do I know this is the one Jesus intended when he taught this prayer?
Because at the end of the prayer, he restated this concept as a part of “teaching them how to pray”:
And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.
“If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you.
The connection isn’t “forgive me at the same time as I forgive others”. It’s not “forgive me and along the way I’ll forgive others.” It’s forgive me in the exact same way I forgive others. That pause has influenced our misunderstanding of Jesus’ prayer.
And Jesus repeated the concept immediately after he taught the prayer! That means one of two things:
Either he believes this is the most important part of the prayer ...
or he believes this is such a hard concept to live up to, we will likely misunderstand it.
[screen] Either one of those means this is an important concept for us to get! If we forgive others, God will forgive us. That’s an active connection. But Jesus didn’t stop there!
He knows we’re likely to presume a passive approach, so the very next verse shares the passive connection:
But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
We pray it every week. We read it as one of the Scripture readings today, and most of us still missed it, didn’t we?
Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?
Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?
The active statement gives us a warm feeling. “If I forgive others, God will forgive me.” Our second reading may even give a sense of power:
If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
But the followup statement Jesus makes as a redirect at the end of the Lord’s prayer may scare us a little bit.
But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Lord, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And don’t forgive us if we insist on holding a grudge.
As you look at those words … as this concept sinks in … who is it?
Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?
Still Missed It, Didn’t Ya?
A few months ago, I talked about restoring a broken relationship, so let me explain a bit how this may be different.
Some people have harmed you in such a profound way, perhaps even in such a repetitive way … restoring the relationship may be dangerous for you.
Forgiving them is key to God forgiving you! So forgiveness is NOT an option! Relationship IS an option. Do NOT put yourself back into a dangerous relationship. You have more value than that, and God would not want you harmed again by this person, so relationship and forgiveness could be separated into two distinct issues. Particular relationships are not required because they may harm you. Forgiveness, however, is required by God because he knows forgiveness is essential to your health.
Holding a grudge weighs on you.
Holding onto animosity steals your energy and your focus.
Medical research shows that holding grudges can actually make you sick!
Psychological research shows that forgiveness emotionally frees YOU, not the one you’re forgiving.
So … how do you forgive someone?
Sometimes it’s brutally easy. Just drop your desire to see them harmed. Release them from the guilt of what they’ve done to you.
But sometimes, it’s not so easy. Sometimes, it takes a lot of time to shift from wanting someone harmed to wanting God’s best for them. If you’re having trouble releasing someone else’s guilt … serving can be a great tool. Serve them.
If they are a toxic person in your life, you can even serve them without them even knowing it. Think of unique ways you can work for their good. In the beginning, you’ll have to force yourself to serve them … you naturally don’t want to serve the jerk in your life. But in serving, you’ll learn something very interesting:
Our culture has taught us something wrong our entire life! We’ve been taught that love is something you feel, and serving people is driven by that emotion. Biblically, that’s incorrect.
We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.
Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.
Love isn’t something we feel. Love is something we DO! Service isn’t action driven by an emotion we call love. Service is action called love that DRIVES emotion.
Service is action called love that DRIVES emotion.
For God so loved the world, He ______ … He DID SOMETHING! He took action!
The more you serve someone, the more your emotions will change. If you have a hard time wishing someone well, the more you serve them, the more you’ll start caring about their wellbeing.
And your creativity in serving them will speed up the process. Simple acts of service that come to mind immediately will get you there. But spending time and energy scheming ways to serve them anonymously will activate your forgiveness neurons faster. In the beginning, it will be difficult, but the transition will eventually take hold and before you know it … you’ll actually want God’s best for them … even if you’re not returning them to their prior place in your life.
And the work is worth it, even if the motive is selfish:
But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Who is it? Who do you need to forgive? Start by asking God to help you forgive them. Then, set out to serve them until your emotions catch up with your actions. You may have missed this principle until today … but now it’s right in front of you clearly. Forgiveness of others is your responsibility if you hope to be forgiven.