Please keep your Psalter hymnal out as you'll need to turn into the back to page 62, where you'll find Lord's Day 51 in the Heidelberg Catechism. We'll be turning our attention there momentarily. And then I invite you to open your Bibles to the Gospel according to Matthew. The Gospel according to Matthew. We'll be reading from two locations this evening. First, Matthew chapter 18. Matthew chapter 18. And then back to Matthew chapter 6, where we'll take up our consideration of the Lord's Prayer. We'll begin our reading of God's Word tonight from Matthew chapter 18, beginning in verse 21. This takes place after Jesus has addressed the question of what to do when a brother sins against you and lays out what we commonly refer to as the stages or the steps of discipline that lead ultimately to church discipline. And Peter, correctly understanding that this discipline ought to lead to forgiveness, asks the question in verse 21, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times. Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times, or I prefer the seventy times seven. Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay back everything. The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go. But when the servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. Pay back what you owe me, he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, be patient with me, and I will pay you back. But he refused. instead he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt when the other servants saw what had happened they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened then the master called the servant in you wicked servant he said i canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as i had on you in anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart. Now turning back to Matthew chapter 6. Matthew chapter 6, we consider the Lord's prayer. We take up our consideration this evening. Jesus teaching the disciples how to pray, said, 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 our text for this evening. 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 men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. Here ends the reading of God's Word. Again, our text this evening is, Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors. In the Catechism, question and answer 126, we confess what it is we understand this petition to mean. And I'd ask you to respond as I ask you the question. What does the fifth request mean? And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors' means. Because of Christ's blood, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do, or the evil that constantly clings to us. Forgive us just as we are fully determined, as evidence of your grace in us, to forgive our neighbors. People of God, this evening we return to our consideration of the Lord's Prayer, taking up this fifth petition. Last time we considered the petition to pray for our daily bread, which in most of our lives is the most urgent need that we feel. something that when we are without, we are urgent and eager to get. And Jesus pointed us the way to the one who can give us all that we need to sustain us in this life, in this world. And this evening we come to the fifth petition in which we address what Martin Luther called the most, the greatest need that we have. Not the most urgent, we don't necessarily feel it, but it is certainly our greatest need in this life. That which we need, the forgiveness of our sins. And I was pleased this morning to see the providence of God at work when Pastor Voss, preaching from Hosea, touched on this topic so repeatedly and forcefully. It was a kind providence that we get this evening, Jesus' word on this. And with this petition, Christ would have us acknowledge three things. First, our poor situation, for which he provides our unpretentious supplication, so that our faith may be exercised and confirmed in our proper surety. And I'll unpack all that as we go. But by teaching his disciples to pray this way, Jesus, first of all, reminds us of our poor situation. The situation we live in that requires that we would have to pray this prayer. When Jesus teaches us to pray, forgive us our debts, or as Luke records it, forgive us our sins, he reminds us that we're debtors to God. It's assumed. There's no instruction here about the nature of that, but he tells us that we need to pray because we are debtors to God. All men owe God a debt of obedience. We're his creatures. We're made in his image. We owe obedience to our creator. And more than that, we are creatures that have been placed in covenant with him. He established a covenant with our first father, Adam. A covenant that obliged Adam to obedience to the will of God. In Adam's fall from that covenant, in his failure to keep that covenant, we all fell. In Adam's fall, sinned we all, we say. And in Romans 5, verse 12, Paul writes, Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin. And in this way, death came to all men because all sinned. We are all under the curse. Earned for us in Adam. Therefore, each of us by nature is depraved and we are guilty before God. We must confess with David in Psalm 51, Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. All men owe God a debt of satisfaction. Payment for the penalty that we deserve for our sin. We owe him our obedience. We owe him satisfaction. Together, these make up a debt that is beyond our comprehension. The debt of the unforgiving servant in the parable amounts to about 200,000 man-hours of labor. I can't fathom that. And that's nothing compared to the debt that we owe our God. And we owe Him eternal death, the punishment that we deserve. We're poor. We're bankrupt. And there's no federal bailout coming. And not only that, we add to it every day. With the actual sins that we commit. We don't just stop spending, we just keep spending. We keep sinning. Now scripture tells us that all men know their guilt. But they don't care. Paul writes in Romans 1, verse 31, Although they know God's righteous decrees, that those who do such things deserve death, all men know. They not only continue to do these things, but they approve of those who practice them. When it comes to the sins of men, all men are quick to identify the sins of others against them. Just step on their toes and they'll let you know. But when it comes to our own sins, Our own sins against others, we will be ever hearing but never understanding, ever seeing but never perceiving, that we thumb our nose at God and we stamp all over other people's toes. That's how we are in Adam. But out of all men, there are some. Male and female, young and old, from every tribe, nation, people, and tongue, there are some who are blessed for they see and they hear. from the law of God they gain a sense of the greatness of their sin and misery how much they owe God the debt they owe and how much they offend their neighbor some the Holy Spirit moves them to repent of their sins and to believe in the only one who can cancel their debt the only one who can merit their salvation that's Jesus Christ our Lord the Savior who has come into the world to satisfy the debt of all his people by his sinless life by his vicarious death by the shedding of his precious blood to purchase us. And it is for these that the gospel of Jesus Christ is proclaimed day in, day out around this world. As our risen Lord explained to Paul in Acts chapter 26 it says I am sending you, Paul to open their eyes and turn them from the darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified through faith in me. Paul explains this to Christians. He explains this to us in Galatians chapter 3. He says, you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All men owe the debt. Some men have had that debt relieved through faith in the one man, the God man. jesus christ who has paid it to the full and when jesus teaches this prayer in matthew chapter six he is not teaching this prayer to all men not all men can pray the lord's prayer he instructs his disciples and through them all who will believe on his name through their witness he teaches us as saints as sons of god who pray to our Father in Heaven who know ourselves to be redeemed while at the same time poor sinners. Martin Luther made it clear we're sinners and saints. We're both at the same time in this life. Therefore in Heidelberg Catechism question and answer 126 we refer to ourselves as poor sinners that we are. It doesn't mean that we're not redeemed we are still poor sinners. because of the sins we do and the evil that constantly clings to us. In the language of the original, because of our transgressions and that depravity which clings to us. We might say because of our actual sins and because of our original sin. Poor sinners that we are. And with Paul in Romans chapter 7, we cannot deny the persistence and the perniciousness of ever-present sin. Paul writes, I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. No, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. This is why, as children of God, we are told over and over in Scripture to exert ourselves, to put off, to throw off, to get rid of, to put to death our sinful nature and the sin that clings so closely, that so easily entangles as we live lives, as we seek to live lives that are worthy of the calling we received in Christ Jesus. John reminds the children of God, he reminds us in 1 John 1, verse 8, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. We, even as the saints of God, live in a poor situation. We have trouble with sin. Although we've been saved by grace through faith. Therefore, John continues in verse 9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Which is exactly what Jesus teaches us to do here with this, our unpretentious supplication. Forgive us our debts. We cannot be pretentious. We cannot pretend when making this supplication that we are justified in asking for forgiveness or that we have any right to lay claim to it because of anything that's in us, because of anything that we can do, because of anything we might want to do. we are disqualified because of our depravity and continued transgression we are right to sing not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole we need forgiveness and we can't pretend that we have the right in ourselves to claim it but you may ask why do we need to pray for it at all have you ever had that thought as you've read this petition forgive us our debts if you ask this question you're not the first and you're not going to be the last that asks it because the logic seems to make sense it goes something like this if we are justified through faith in Christ so that we already enjoy the forgiveness of all of our sins then we need not pray for what we already have well the sufficient answer to this question although it may not be satisfying to us because it's so simple is that while it's certainly true that God has forgiven all of our sins for Christ's sakes he has nevertheless commanded he's commanded that we pray for their forgiveness Paul is clear when he says in Colossians chapter 1 God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the son he loves in whom we have redemption. The forgiveness of sins. It's ours. And he echoes the emphasis in Ephesians chapter 1 when he includes the forgiveness of sins among every spiritual blessing that is ours in Christ Jesus already. Even so, Jesus is clearly teaching us in this instruction that the supplication, forgive us our debts, is necessary. Herman Bovink, a Reformed theologian, offers a fuller explanation of why we need to pray this supplication that has to do with the nature of our justification, the nature of how we're made right with God. I found it helpful. I hope it helps you. The forgiveness that is part of justification is nothing less than the complete acquittal of all the guilt and punishment of sin, not only of the past and of the present, but also future sins. And it remains a fact, however, that believers, after receiving forgiveness, still make mistakes, even fall into grave sins. In other words, he writes, while forgiveness removes the punishment for sin, absolutely, eternally. It does not remove the fact that it deserves punishment. And the awareness that sin deserves punishment is not lost on the children of God. Sin brings with it, especially for believers, a sense of guilt, pain, regret, alienation from God, remorse. And we may not pay attention to it, but it is there. And this comes as our Father in Heaven disciplines us, as He disciplined Israel, as we heard this morning. He disciplines us as His wayward children in order to draw us back. Thus David complained in Psalm 38, he says, Your arrows have pierced me, and your hand has come down upon me. Because of your wrath there is no health in my body, my bones have no soundness because of my sin. My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. I confess my iniquity. I'm troubled by my sin. The reason this is so, Bob says, is because justification does not consist merely in that declaration of God, that once and for all declaration of God, that forensic declaration, that eternal declaration, that our sins are forgiven, that we're not guilty. It is all that. But it's also an act of God that passes from the court of heaven to the hearts of his people. whereby the Holy Spirit creates in us a deep-rooted assurance through the gospel. And now I'm quoting from Heidelberg 21, that out of sheer grace, earned for us by Christ, not only others, but I too, have had my sins forgiven, have been made forever right with God, and have been granted salvation. Declaration in the courts of heaven. Deep-rooted assurance worked in me by the Spirit. This is our justification before God. It's not a mystery out there. Am I? If I am, I know. I have some measure of assurance. The experiential side, our side of justification includes the awareness and assurance that we are in right relationship with God as our Father. And once this is established, this relationship can never be broken. But our experience of it can change. Our sinful nature and actual sin serve to strain our relationship with our Father in heaven. He'll ever be our Father. And because He is, He loves us enough to discipline us when we have estranged Him by our sin. He will pull us back. He will draw us near. And it may not be a comfortable ride. But He loves us. And he does so. It's for this reason that we confess in the Canons of Dort, in the fifth head, under perseverance of the saints, in Article 5, that by their sins believers very highly offend God, incur a deadly guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, interrupt the exercise of faith, very grievously wound their conscience, and sometimes, for a while, lose the sense of God's favor because of their sin. The experience of our relationship with God can turn sour. Not undone, but sour until, we confess, when they change their course by serious repentance, the light of God's fatherly countenance again shines on them. In Article 7, we confess that it is by His Word and Spirit that He certainly and effectually renews them to repentance. He brings them back. to a sincere and godly sorrow for their sins, that they may seek and obtain remission in the blood of the Mediator, in Christ, may again experience the favor of a reconciled God, and through faith adore His mercies, and henceforward more diligently work out our salvation with fear and trembling. In other words, we come back changed. When the Lord disciplines us because of our sin, we come back changed not only to experience His favor and to rejoice in His mercies, but also with an eye to change how we live. And in this petition of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus teaches believers this way of repentance, this way back to God. Forgive us our debts. Day by day we struggle against sin. Day by day we pray, forgive us. Our debts. And when we pray, we do not pray in doubt and despair. We do not pray as though we are no longer children of God who face eternal damnation because of sin. We pray as children to the Father who is in heaven and we say, Amen. This is sure to be. We pray with confidence that He will answer. and when we pray this prayer as we often do as a blanket forgive us our debts I'd like to challenge myself and challenge you as well that when we know our sin that's not enough to change the way we approach tomorrow if we confess sin we call it what God calls it that might take a little reflection on our part to figure out what it is that we did in biblical terms but I'll tell you if we take the time to call it what God calls it confess it for what it is we will have found also the prescription for what we when we put that off what to put on in its place that we change our life that we change our direction that we do that U-turn that Pastor Boss talked about this morning. When we pray, forgive us our debts, either particularly for those things we know or generally for those sins that we have yet to really understand about ourselves. And we are thus restored, we are renewed in the awareness of the presence of the Holy Spirit who is the deposit guaranteeing our eternal security, our eternal inheritance, bearing witness in our spirit that we are children of God. And we rejoice anew that nothing is able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. With assurance of faith renewed, we are strengthened in our motivation, we are strengthened in our ability to live on earth as children of our Father in heaven, to live in a way that is in keeping with who we are and what he's called us to be. Is this not the petition of David in Psalm 51? After confessing his sin, he implores God our Father to cleanse me with hyssop and I will be clean. Wash me and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. And grant me a willing spirit to sustain me. Restore me. Enable me. Assure me by your Spirit that I'm yours. And so just as we cannot pretend that of ourselves we can make this petition, Neither can we pretend that we have no need to make it. We do. Therefore we confess in Heidelberg answer 126 that by this petition we ask our Father, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do, or the evil that constantly clings to us. Forgive us. Well finally we come to the second half of verse 12. In which Jesus directs us to our proper surety for making this prayer. The ground upon which we can stand if we're going to pray this prayer aright, and we're going to pray it in a way that God hears and answers. To our supplication, Jesus adds this qualifier, as we have forgiven our debtors. Forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors. He highlights it in verses 14 and 15 when he comments, For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. These are strong words. Words echoed when Jesus sums up the parable of the ungrateful servant. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you, unless you forgive your brother from the heart. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. One word, as. What does it mean? Well, this much can be clear from the word as. There is some correlation between our forgiveness of others and our Father's forgiveness of us. They're related. There's correlation. And the question most commonly asked of this correlation is, how does our forgiveness of others impact our Father in heaven? And there have been many answers posited for this question. Some say that the presence or lack of our forgiveness of others is the basis upon which our Father in Heaven will either forgive us or not. Others say that the degree to which we forgive others is the measure by which our Father in Heaven determines how much to forgive us. Still others say that the way in which we forgive others determines the way in which our Father in Heaven forgives us. A lot of ink on those points. But as helpful as any of these answers may sound, all of them share a premise that should at least give us pause, if not make us reject them outright. Each considers our forgiveness of others as having some intrinsic worth, something in itself that merits God's consideration in a way that influences or controls what he will do. And I hope that sits poorly with you. Each of them finds our proper surety, that which secures and guarantees our forgiveness by our Father in heaven, in us. In our forgiveness of others. Therefore, all of these answers fall short or mislead because they forget or minimize the fact that our forgiveness of others is always imperfect. It can't be the standard. It can't be the basis. It can't be the measure. To ask our Father in Heaven to forgive us our debts on the basis or by the measure or in the way that we forgive our debtors is to ask Him to offer us and provide for us an incomplete and reversible forgiveness, which is to pray for our destruction. A better question. one that leads to our confession in the Heidelberg Catechism, is this. How does our forgiveness of others impact us? In other words, when we consider whether or how much or in what way we forgive others, how does this impact us? Does it serve to assure us that our faith is true? Or does it challenge our profession? Jesus sets our forgiveness of others alongside our Father's forgiveness to us as a proof, as an evidence by which we are either assured or challenged. We're asked this question in James chapter 2. You know it. What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but he has no deeds? Can such a faith save him? What Jesus is saying is that if we are sure that we have forgiven our debtors, imperfectly to be sure, but truly and sincerely from the heart, if we can be sure that we have forgiven our debtors, then we can be sure that we are children of our Father in heaven, who will hear and perfectly answer our supplication, forgive us our debts. Answer 21, 26 affirms this when it says that our full determination to forgive our neighbor is evidence of your grace in us. In other words, when I contemplate my neighbor, who I know has offended me, and I know that I have done my best to forgive him. The promises that, and maybe you've read the book The Peacemaker, they come to mind. The promises we make to our fellow travelers in this world. I won't hold this incident against you. I won't bring it up in the future. I won't talk about it to anybody else. And I won't let it stand in the way of our relationship. When we make those promises and we've done it in good faith and we do all that we can to keep them. And we have forgiven our debtor. And we know that we have to the best of our ability. we can go to the throne of grace with confidence that we are children of our Father and that He'll hear us and He will forgive our debts. If, however, we are sure that we have withheld forgiveness or that we have broken our promises, then we can be sure that we will remain under the discipline of our Heavenly Father until such time as we do forgive our debtors, just as in Christ God forgave us. It makes me think of Matthew chapter 5, where Jesus warns the brother that if you know that someone has something against you and you're on your way to worship me, and you come to the altar and you remember that you're not reconciled with your brother, put it down, go back, be reconciled, and then come. If we know we're withholding forgiveness, if we know that we have broken our promises we dare not approach our Father and ask Him to forgive us our debts for we're under discipline our proper surety the cause of, the basis for and the measure by which our Father in Heaven forgives us our debts is not found in us rather it's found outside of us in Jesus Christ our Lord in Him we have redemption through his blood the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. Therefore Heidelberg answer 126 begins because of or for the sake of Christ's blood forgive us. Our forgiveness of others is merely a very important indicator of the work of God's grace in us for the sake of Christ's blood. our forgiveness of others or the lack thereof serves as evidence that will either strengthen our assurance of faith or lead us to repent of our sins against our debtor. So that once we have forgiven, we may approach the throne of grace with confidence and ask our Father to forgive us our debts. I'm going to close with the words of the Heidelberg 126 from the old edition, from Ursinus' original edition, because it lays out the logic, I think, much more clearly than it's in our blue psalter. And I just want to listen carefully for the logic, the understanding, the confession that we make here. What is the fifth petition? Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That is, be pleased for the sake of Christ's blood, not to impute to us, poor sinners that we are, our transgressions, nor that depravity which always cleaves to us, even as we feel this evidence of thy grace in us, that it is our firm resolution from the heart to forgive our neighbor. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we are so grateful that our relationship with you by the blood of Jesus Christ is irrevocable, eternal. unwavering from your side. But Lord, we must admit that we are sinners, that sin still clings to us, that we continue to offend our neighbor and you. And we thank you, Father, that you have given us this prayer, this promise that if we come to you in repentance and faith and beg of you to forgive us our debts, you will do so. and we thank you, Father, for this direction from Jesus, our Lord, that when we contemplate this approach, that we would contemplate our lives as your children, and that we would look at those we know have offended us in one way or another and ask of ourselves, have I forgiven my debtor? And Lord, if I have not, I pray that by your Spirit you will work in me an urgency, a compression, an oppression of your hand that would drive me to do so. That I might love him as I love myself. That my conscience may be clear. That I might have evidence in my own life that affirms the faith that I profess with my lips. And that I might come before your throne of grace with full confidence that you will forgive my debts for the sake of Christ whose blood has purchased me. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.