Tonight, as well, we continue our study of the Heidelberg Catechism, specifically as it deals with the Lord's Prayer, the Fifth Petition, Lord's Day 51, in the back of the Psalter hymnal, page 62, Lord's Day 51, question and answer 126. Before we recite that together, we read together from Matthew 18, verses 21 through 35. I believe what is the familiar parable of the unmerciful servant. Matthew 18, beginning at verse 21, reading through the end of the chapter. Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, 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. 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 that 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. And then turning to Lord's Day 51. Again, page 62, question and answer 126, as we confess our answer together. The question asks, 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. Dear people of God, if you remember back to the fourth petition, in that petition, Jesus teaches us to deal with that which is necessary for physical life, our daily bread. And now in the fifth petition, which is before us tonight, He teaches us to deal with that which is necessary for spiritual life, even more than that, eternal life. It's interesting to notice and it's important for us to understand that there is a connection between these two petitions. In the fourth petition, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And now in the fifth, we pray, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Give us, forgive us. And we need to understand that the first to give us will do us no good without the second to forgive us. What good is food or bodily nourishment without the hope of heaven? Jesus said, For what will it profit a man And if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul without forgiveness, beloved, there is no hope of heaven. Bread, we know, is something that is necessary for the well-being of the body. But guilt and sin is something that threatens the well-being of the soul. When we lose our daily bread, our body dies. But if we cannot lose, if we cannot be rid of our guilt, The soul dies. A minister once said, and I believe rightly so, that we ministers spend so much time telling people how to live that we forget to tell people of the importance of how to die. You see, no man is prepared to die until his sins are forgiven and he is reconciled to God. David, in Psalm 25 verse 18, reminds us of what is truly important when he says, Look on my affliction and pain and forgive all my sins. You see what he says? God, look upon the difficulties that I am going through. But he doesn't ask God to take them away. Instead, forgive all my sins. Take them away. Shortly after I was diagnosed with cancer those years ago, this verse was part of my devotions in one of the devotional books that I was reading. And what comfort for that to remind me that I can die healthy, so to speak. Old age, you name it. But if my sins aren't forgiven, it means nothing. But I can die with a body riddled with cancer. But if my sins are forgiven, that's what's important. Look upon my affliction and my pain and forgive all my sins. That prayer is necessary. It's a matter of life or death because the Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And not one human being is excluded from that verse. Now we know that the believer receives the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ by the grace of God. Yet as long as we are surrounded by the flesh in this life, we lie under the burden of sin and that righteousness shines in us in this life ever so faintly, ever so dimly. People of God, this prayer for forgiveness seeks to strengthen the Christian's obedience to the first great commandment to love God above all as our relationship with Him is restored more and more. But Jesus also points out that it seeks to restore another relationship as He adds, forgive us as we also have forgiven our debtors. Now, boys and girls, I know that you can understand how hard this is, not only for you, but also for older people. So often we don't want to forgive others when they have hurt us, when they have taken something from us, or when they say something nasty to us or about us. We don't want to forgive them. But Jesus makes it clear that those who are forgiven, forgive. And if we turn that around, we quickly find another truth that is horrible. Those who do not forgive give evidence of not being forgiven. We consider together tonight the believer's prayerful request for reconciled relationships. First of all, desired from God in restored communion. Secondly, demonstrated toward our neighbor in restored fellowship. And when we ask God to forgive us our sins, we are making a confession. I am confessing that something is not right between me and God. That right relationship that once was between God and man in the Garden of Eden has been changed to a wrong one. Sin has broken that sweet communion between the Creator and the creature. And so this petition calls us to see ourselves and to see God in the proper light. He is the perfectly Holy One. We are unholy. He is the One to whom everything belongs. We are the ones who have stolen from Him through our sin. Sin is stealing from God. And therefore, to ask for forgiveness is to plead for mercy and grace, realizing by the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit that there is no other way that my debt can be wiped out than through God's forgiveness. In this petition, Jesus refers to our sins as debts. He's not talking about a debt of money when one owes another a certain amount, although that's the illustration He uses in the parable that we read together from Matthew 18. And I think that's because if there's something man understands, it's money. Especially when you are the one to whom the money is owed. A debt is something that is owed, something that one is obligated to pay. When one owes a debt to another, it is his moral duty to give what is owed. And beloved, our sins are called debts because they represent our failure to pay God perfect love and obedience as His law requires. We owed God praise and glory through obedience, but all that we have given Him is insult and disobedience. And therefore, sin is stealing from God. Now, because of our sin, our failure to pay God that obedience means that we must pay God a debt of punishment. But beloved, the debt that we owe, that each one of us owes to God is so great. We add to it every day. The 10,000 talents that the slave owed the king is meant to show us that. Dr. William Hendrickson in his commentary on Matthew says, an addict talent, the kind probably meant here, amounted to no less than 6,000 denarii. At the rate of 6 denarii a week, a denarius for each working day, it would take a laborer 1,000 weeks just to earn one talent. So multiply that 1,000 times the 10,000 talents divided by 52 for 52 weeks in a year, and that's 192,308 years. And that's just to earn it, let alone to save it. And Hendrickson goes on to compare the value of a dollar back then and what a dollar is worth today. And the point is, it is a debt impossible to pay off. And congregation in and of ourselves, that's our situation. There's not even a small hope that we could pay our debt to God. And to think that we might be able to is in a sense laughable. It's to be self-deceived. Especially as answer 13 of the Catechism says, we daily increase our debt. Our debt includes our actual sins of thought, word, and deed. Our original sin. Our evil, depraved natures which always cling to us, which we are conscious of through our motives and desires. Our sins of commission. Boys and girls, that means the sins that we commit. The evil that we do. And our sin of omission. Failing to do. Omitting to do what God requires of us. Public sins, private sins, conscious sins, unconscious sins, against God, against others, against ourselves. You see, the Catechism is correct when it describes us as poor sinners, or as the older version of the Catechism says better, miserable sinners. Something that is miserable is something that causes unhappiness, discomfort, pain, or misery. It's the opposite of that which is pleasant. And because of our sin, we are miserable to God. We are miserable to others. We are miserable even to ourselves. Beloved, we must know this. We must know how great our sin and misery are. We may not water down our sin. We may not make excuses for our sin. We must own up to it. Because then and only then, when we know how great our sin and misery are, when we know that by the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, can we come before God with the proper attitude. An attitude of humility. An attitude of sincerity. But also an attitude of confidence that God will forgive our sins. As John says, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When we pray for forgiveness, as the Catechism says, we ask that God would not hold against us poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do, or the evil that constantly clings to us. In other words, we ask God to do the very opposite for us than what we fully deserve. To hold against here means to impute. Impute means to charge to one's account. When we think of the imputation of Christ's righteousness, it's a beautiful thing for you and me, That Christ's righteousness is laid upon us, given to us, imputed to us. In a sense, when we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, it's not that we take that garment and put it on, but it is put on us. But here we ask God not to charge to our account, not to impute to our account what is rightfully ours. Because with that debt on our account, we can have no communion with Him. So then how dare we ask God for forgiveness? How do we dare to do that? Because of Christ's blood. Plain and simple. Because of Christ's blood. We know that in the Old Testament, in the time of the sacrifices of bulls and goats and sheep, that one day per year as we considered in the last week or so, the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies behind the veil into the very presence of God with the blood of the sacrifices and sprinkle that blood on the mercy seat. And in that way, the sins of the people were paid for and forgiveness was pictured as a reality to the people. But of course, the blood of bulls and goats wasn't sufficient to pay the debt of sin. But that blood pointed forward to the blood of the Lamb of God. You see, all the saints, even before Jesus Christ came, they were also forgiven for Jesus' sake by the same blood of Jesus. And He, as the great high priest, has entered the sanctuary with His own precious blood and secured for His people an eternal redemption. Consider the value of Christ's blood, congregation. That's a hard thing to do. But maybe this will help. Consider the great debt of you and me of each and every believer and then consider the value of Christ's blood. Those who are regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit and repent of their sins and plead for forgiveness for Jesus' sake are, as John says, cleansed from all unrighteousness. His blood cleanses white as snow, as Scripture says. Better than any bleach could ever do. Boys and girls, maybe sometimes your mom uses bleach in the washing machine to get the whites their whitest. And I've been struck by some of these commercials, these advertisements for these products in which you can dip copper or brass or something into and it removes the tarnish just like that. Makes it sparkle like crazy. But that's not even as good as this. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness. We must understand that with forgiveness God cancels the punishment, the penalty, and the eternal punishment of sin for the repentant sinner. Now, the eternal moral law is the soul that sins. It shall die. And the wages of sin is death. And when God forgives our sins, He does not cancel that law. He does not lower His standards. But He takes the curse and penalty of sin upon Himself in Jesus Christ on the cross. Like the king in the parable, God has compassion on us and releases us and forgives us so that the curse and the penalty are not charged to us. That's the Gospel message. That's wondrous love, beloved. That's amazing grace. And the double beauty here is that this forgiveness is twofold. God removes our sins as far as the east is from the west He remembers them no more, but He also restores His people to enjoy communion with Him. He removes something from us, that which would kill us, and He restores that which gives us life. That, gems, is the message that we are to bring to the four corners of the world. Now, we need to consider this question. If, as repentant Christians, Christ's atonement has already justified and cleansed us from every sin, if God's grace has forever settled our account with Himself, after all, Romans 8, verse 1 says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And verse 33 of that chapter says, Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? If all that is true, then why do we need to continue to ask daily for forgiveness? well for one thing our daily sins are worthy of hell and damnation and our daily prayer for forgiveness demonstrates our dependence upon the forgiving grace of God that we have a need for forgiveness and only He can and only He will forgive beloved we are to acknowledge daily that our help comes only from the Lord and as well God gives His people personal assurance of justification and forgiveness in Christ through continual repentance and confession of sins. God has appointed that confession of sins and assurance of forgiveness go together. Consider what David says in Psalm 32. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord. And you forgave the iniquity of my sin. We can almost hear it. How David was downcast before he confessed his sin, but in the joy of that last phrase, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Such liberation. Confession and assurance go together. We need assurance daily. We need to confess daily. And for one thing, that shows our dependence upon God alone for forgiving grace. People of God, many have the wrong idea that since God forgives when I ask, that I can sin, that grace may abound. We considered that this morning a little bit as we considered Jezebel from Thyatira. And I've heard it said, I can go out and get drunk tonight because in the morning when I'm conscious, I will just ask for forgiveness and God will forgive me and everything will be okay. And I can do that night after night after night. That's how it works, some believe. Beloved, God does not forgive our debts in order to pave the way for the next sin. in order to make sinning easier the next time around. Not at all. Every forgiven sin makes or ought to make the next sin more difficult for the truly humbled and the truly repentant sinner to commit because he thinks of the blood of Jesus Christ that He shed for that sin. He who is forgiven much, loves much. And he who loves much keeps our Lord's commandments. And I trust you see that sanctification is very much in view here. That is, to hate sin more and more, and to love and to seek to do what is right more and more. And that includes especially how we deal with those who sin against us. Again, in the first place, we desire forgiveness from God in order to have restored communion with Him. And then we are called to demonstrate forgiveness toward our neighbor for restored fellowship. When Jesus teaches this petition, He is teaching also that God forgives us in order to make us forgiving. The Bible is crystal clear that God's forgiveness of us and our forgiveness of others is intimately connected. After teaching the disciples the Lord's Prayer, Jesus said, if you forgive men for their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Now, we must not think that God's forgiveness of us is conditioned by or depends upon our forgiveness of others. That's not our Lord's point here. The Catechism says it beautifully in the second part of the answer. Forgive us just as we are fully determined as evidence of Your grace in us to forgive our neighbors. congregation the forgiven forgive only the forgiven are able to forgive only the forgiven want to forgive it is a part of that fruit of regeneration in new life our forgiveness of others is to be natural as evidence of God's forgiving grace in us after washing the disciples feet Jesus said, I have given you an example that you should do as I have done and it cannot be otherwise for when we are branches of the vine, Jesus Christ, then His life flows in us and we through Christ live the life of God. We are renewed in His image and in His likeness and cannot neglect to forgive as we ourselves must live off of forgiveness every day we are not saved we know by faith as if it had earning power yet faith must be present if we are to enjoy salvation as paul says for we for you are saved by grace through faith faith is that instrument that receives christ's saving merits faith must be present and exercise its salvation and its component pardon forgiveness are to be received and the fruit of faith and the fruit of being forgiven include forgiving god gives us the power to believe and forgive but he also gives us the responsibility and the strength of the holy spirit to do these things and we must also understand, beloved, that we don't present our forgiving of others to God as an example for Him to follow. Now, I want you to think about that for a moment. We don't present our forgiving of others to God as an example for Him to follow. Think about this. Think about how treacherous that would be. With us, so often we say that we forgive another, But then we quickly add, but things can never be the same as they were before. I cannot trust you anymore. Things will not be as they used to be. So then the relationship that was broken is not completely restored. Now just imagine, as horrible as it is, imagine if God would forgive us that way. Beloved, if He did, then hell would stay open for us and heaven would remain closed to us because that broken communion was not completely restored. But with God, the prodigal son is completely restored. And here's where the rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, ought to have full impact. To say, I'll forgive, but I can never forget is not genuine forgiveness and it is disobedience. The catechism says that we are fully determined to forgive. Again, I believe the older version of the catechism strengthens this by saying it is our full purpose heartily to forgive as evidence of God's grace in us. Jesus says in the last verse of the portion we read, this is how My Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from the heart. To forgive from the heart means, as God does for us, to remember no more. Since I've been here the last couple of months, I've said it a couple of times to the boys and girls that we don't hide another's wrong in our back pocket and keep it there until we can pull it out again and stick it in their face because they do something else. Remember no more. And of course, there's no limit to our forgiveness. There's not to be. Seventy times seven. And we know that's not easy. And that's why we need to pray also for a forgiving spirit, trusting that God will give it to us. Beloved, when another sins against you, then they have also sinned against God. That's worse, isn't it? And that ought to grieve us more. Not that we have been sinned against, but that Almighty God has been sinned against. The parable of the unmerciful servant shows us that the debts we owe to God and the debts men may owe to us are not at all equal. Our debt to God is so great that it cannot be expressed in figures as we said a moment ago. But what another may owe us really amounts to nothing. The fellow slave owed nothing more than a few bucks. Pocket change in comparison to what the unmerciful servant owed. But you know, we read this story about the unmerciful servant And if you're like me, you want to shake your head in disbelief. You want to grab him and shake him and say, what are you doing? We are inclined to be angry at this unmerciful servant. But we must realize, congregation, that God looks at each one of us and how we forgive others. And He says, you are the man. You are the woman. You are the child. We need to be driven to the precious blood of Christ. And every time another sins against us, we are called to remember how little that debt is and how great is our debt to God. And our desire for them is that they would be reconciled with God and when you follow the example of God's forgiveness for Jesus' sake and forgive them and restore fellowship with them, you are then an example to that other of God's forgiving grace which they need. And you may very well be a tool of the Holy Spirit in leading them to Christ. Not to forgive and not to restore is to be a tool in the hand of Satan working to keep them from God. And all this means, congregation, that if you have been sinned against, listen close, it is your responsibility to go and seek restoration with your brother and seek his repentance. You might say, I could never do that. Why should I have to do that? He sinned against me. He has to come and apologize to me. But I say to you and to myself, that's what our Lord did with us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But it does go the other way as well. If you have wronged someone and have not repented to them and sought forgiveness and restored fellowship, you cannot expect forgiveness from God. For you cannot ask forgiveness from God for a wrong done to another when you still sin in not making things right with your brother. People of God, if you won't forgive others, then praying this prayer will not be a blessing to you. It will be a curse. Because the forgiven forgive. And those who refuse to forgive, For them, God's Word is clear how long they will spend trying to repay their debt. The unmerciful slave was turned over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. Boys and girls, how long do you think it took him to pay back his debt? He never did. He never would or could. That's the point. You or I will never be able to repay our debt to God for our sin. And therefore, for those who are not forgiven, the penalty is eternal torture in hell. But for those who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ by grace through faith, we sit here today in humility with the comfort of Christ's shed blood and His saving sacrifice on Calvary's tree with the confidence, the assurance that our debt has been paid in full. Alleluia. Beloved, only through Christ is there peace with God. Only through Him can you draw nearer to God. Is this your comfort? That you are spotless, cleansed in the sight of God for the sake of Jesus Christ? Are you forgiven? Do you forgive? Amen. Shall we pray? Father, what a blessed reminder once again of Your forgiving grace. We know that we have considered this much in recent weeks as we have considered the sacrifice and death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. But we need to hear this daily. We need to be reminded, Father, that without forgiveness, There is no reconciliation. And that we depend completely upon the blood of Jesus to be cleansed from all our unrighteousness. And Father, we thank You too for the challenge tonight that we too must forgive, even as You have forgiven us. We know that that's not possible. Yet that is what You call us to strive for, O Lord. And we pray that You would place within each one of us a forgiving spirit, even as You have first forgiven us. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray these things. Amen.