Lord's Prayer:
Forgive Us Our Trespasses

Pastor Phillips’ Sermon

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that you have brought us to this place on this day. We thank you for all the blessings you have poured out on our lives and we pray that on this day you pour out your Holy Spirit on us, you open our hearts and open our minds to understand your great love and mercy. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

On our recent trip to Honduras, we experienced something I had learned a long time ago but the memory was refreshed as we went again to that place. We felt the people of Honduras had a real difficult time comprehending the forgiveness and grace of God. It’s like that concept just didn’t make sense to them. Even if they were believers, it seemed like they were confused on this issue.

The question that brought out this confusion was the question we usually ask in evangelism. “If you were to die tonight, do you know for sure you would go to heaven?” Many of the people were uncertain, even the ones who were Christians seemed to be confused about this issue. One person thought that because they hadn’t been to church for a month or so, they probably wouldn’t go. Another person said because he struggled with a particularly awful sin, time after time he struggled with it. He felt God would not accept him and let him into heaven. Another person even thought it wasn’t possible to know whether or not you would go to heaven when you died, that it was ultimately up to God to kind of make a choice and a decision and evaluate your life and say, “Oh, okay, I’ll let you in.”

All of this uncertainty comes from a lack of understanding of God’s grace or forgiveness. But I think it’s not just the Hondurans that are confused about this. For instance, the gospel reading a little bit earlier showed Jesus teaching the same point to His people. The disciples were all gathered around and He was teaching about forgiveness. The whole discussion came up when Peter asked Jesus, “How many times should I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Seven times?” Peter thought that sounded pretty good. “Seven times. I’ll forgive him seven times.” But Jesus’ response humbled Peter. “Not seven times but seventy-seven times or seventy times seven,” as it is in some translations, meaning in effect every time. See, even Peter struggled with this concept of forgiveness, what it means, how many times he should forgive as people forgive him.

So to illustrate that and to shed light on this topic, Jesus told a story about the king who wanted to settle accounts. This is a very interesting story. The king has all his servants brought to him to settle accounts. They all owe him a certain amount but one person is brought to him who owes 10,000 talents, literally millions of dollars. He has no way to pay. The king requires payment. He said, “I can’t pay. I’m sorry but I can’t pay.” So the king orders that he and his wife and his children and everything he has be sold so that he might repay some of the debt. The man falls on his knees and begs for mercy. The king amazingly takes pity on him and cancels his debt.

How realistic is that? Say, for instance, you miss a couple mortgage payments. Two or three months go by, you haven’t made any payments. The mortgage company calls up and says, “What’s going on? We haven’t received any payment. You have 60 days, 90 days, whatever and we’re going to have to go into foreclosure or something.” And you say, “Well, I just don’t have the money. I can’t pay the debt.” The mortgage company says, “Okay. We’ll cancel it.” How likely is that? That’s why it’s so difficult for us to understand God’s forgiveness because it doesn’t happen in the world around us. It’s not the way people function. It’s not the way our society works. Forgiveness just doesn’t happen out there.

Now let’s take a look at this story Jesus told. Obviously, it’s a parable and there are some things we can understand very clearly. The king represents God and the servant represents all people. The great unpayable debt is the debt of our sin. We could give our life for our sin but it still really wouldn’t be paid because then we would have lost our life. The king requiring the debt to be paid demonstrates God’s righteousness and holiness. He is holy and righteous and, therefore, He must punish sin. Ordering the servant to pay with his life echos what scripture says, “The wages of sin is death.” Hum.

The servant begging for mercy depicts our repentance when we confess our sins to God and ask for His forgiveness. The king taking pity and canceling that debt imitates the idea of God looking upon our lost condition, being moved with compassion, and sending His Son, Jesus, to pay our debt, to suffer and die on the cross so our sins might be forgiven. And then as we have confessed our sins, God cancels our debt in Jesus’ name.

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus had to spend so much time teaching about forgiveness? I think just like the Hondurans, just like the disciples in Jesus’ story, we struggle with this concept of forgiveness. But what was so difficult for the disciples? Why did they have such a difficult time understanding God’s grace? Well, if you think about their background, their Jewish faith, it was full of all kinds of rules and regulations. There was a group among the Jews called the Pharisees and those Pharisees were famous for being legalistic and telling you all the things you had to do to be good and to be right with God. They had over 500 rules that applied the Ten Commandments. Isn’t that amazing? Ten is enough. I don’t need more than ten. They’re hard enough. But they had over 500 applying each of those commandments to our daily lives. For instance, the commandment about “Remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy.” They had all kinds of laws about what that meant. What does it mean to keep the day holy? Oh, that means you can’t work. That means you can’t cook. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. You could only walk a certain distance, a Sabbath Day’s walk on that day. Can you imagine? Do you think that was God’s intent when He gave the Ten Commandments to just tie people up with all these ridiculous rules? No, it wasn’t. But that was the impression people had about God, that He had all these rules and if you weren’t obeying them, you were in trouble.

The same thing with the Hondurans. They had a strong Catholic background and in their church, many times the church would prescribe what you must do. They would prescribe different things you had to do to be in a good relationship with the church. Even in the Protestant churches in Honduras, they had the same sort of a legalistic way about them where the pastors would manipulate the people and give them guilt trips to get them to do things. They told them they had to attend to church. They had to give a tenth of their money. They couldn’t smoke, couldn’t drink, couldn’t do anything and they thought that’s what it meant to be right with God. Obedience equals right with God.

The problem with that is it’s impossible. No one can perfectly obey God. Since He is perfect and holy, His standard is perfection and no one can live up to that. None of us can measure up to God’s standard. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” This creates another problem. When we’re confronted with this legalistic sense of Christianity, we either pretend we don’t sin and lie or we are so overwhelmed by our sins, we don’t even think we’re worthy to talk to God in prayer. We’re in despair. But the bible gives us a third option. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so no one can boast.” From this passage, we learn four things. First of all, we are saved by grace, God’s undeserved and unconditional love. The acronym could be spelled out, “God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense.” The second thing we learn is we receive the grace through faith, faith in Jesus, God’s Son and our Savior. The third, we do not save ourselves. It’s not by works. It’s not by going to church or giving money or trying to be perfect. That’s not what saves us. And fourth, salvation, forgiveness is God’s gift. Now how many times have you received a gift on your birthday or Christmas time, somebody hands you the gift, you open it, “Oh, it’s wonderful. Thank you, thank you,” and then they pull out a receipt and say, “Okay, you owe me $30.” It doesn’t make sense, does it? If it’s called a gift, then you don’t pay for it. If God gives us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life as a gift, Jesus already paid for it. We do not pay for it.

Jesus teaches this concept over and over, tells many stories, even includes it in the Lord’s Prayer. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” There is another great story, though, that I want to use to help understand this concept because it’s crucial to Christianity to understand God’s forgiveness. This comes from Luke 15:11-32 and it’s the story of the prodigal son. “Jesus continued, ‘There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had and set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in the whole country and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country who sent him to his field to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods the pigs were eating but no one gave him anything. When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare and here I am starving to death? I will set out and go back to my father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him. He ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the Father said to his servant, ‘Quick, bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate for this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing so he called one of the servants and asked him what was going on. ‘Your brother has come,’ he replied. ‘And your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ The older brother became angry and refused to go in. So his father went out and pleaded with him but he answered his father, ‘Look, all these years I have been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. When this son of yours who has squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him.’ ‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me and everything I have is yours but we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.’”

For me, that story really hits home because it talks about fathers and sons and the difficulties of their relationship. But I’m struck by several points in this story. First, the stubborn persistence of sin in the lost son, how he pushed so hard to get his way, get his money and go off and squander it. Second, when the lost son comes to his senses, what a great moment that is. It’s like the cloud clears and the sun comes through and he sees things for what they are. He understands now what he has done. Third, the enduring love of the father that no matter what his son has done, no matter where he has gone, he can’t wait to see him return. And he is watching and watching, day after day and finally, when his son does come to his senses and returns, he sees him way in the distance and he doesn’t wait for him to arrive. He runs out to him and throws his arms around him and expresses his love to him. And finally, that powerful statement of the father that his son was lost, dead and now is found. He’s alive. In this story, it’s very clear God is the father and we are the son. And that tells you a lot about God’s love and forgiveness, doesn’t it?

While we were in Honduras, a young Honduran girl came up to me at one point in the clinic and she said, “Remember me?” And I looked at her and said, “Yeah, I kind of remember you.” And then she talked. She said, “Last year when you came down as a team, I was the translator for your wife when she was doing evangelism. When she was speaking to the people and I was translating for her, I felt like she was speaking to me because I had been a Christian for many years but I didn’t understand God’s grace, God’s forgiveness. I felt like I wasn’t right with God because I wasn’t obeying all the things He wanted me to do but when I listened to your wife as she was speaking to that other person, God opened my heart and He helped me to understand His love and forgiveness.” That women is set free and, you know, she has changed her life completely. Because she now understands God’s great love, she and her husband will be house parents at the ranch where they raise the children they get from the street. So she and her husband are now serving the Lord full time. They have given their lives to serving God because they understand what Jesus has done for them. It was amazing to hear her describe what a difference that made for her in her relationship to God. She finally got it. The light went on and she understood God’s love.

My question for you is “Do you get it? Do you know how much God loves you and that your sins are completely forgiven in Jesus’ name?” If your answer is yes, then I have a job for you Because our relationship with God, our faith has both a vertical and a horizontal dimension. The vertical is that we receive God’s forgiveness. The horizontal is that we forgive each other. Our sons, our daughters, our husbands, our wives, our parents, our grandchildren, our friends, our neighbors, if we really understand God’s love for us, then we begin to imitate that love with those around us. Amen.

Copyright 2007 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church