Debts and Debtors [A]

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Transcript:

Well, we’re going to continue on this morning with our study of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, if you’ll turn there with me. Matthew chapter 6, starting in verse 9, says, After this manner, therefore, pray ye, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

This morning we’re going to look in particular, excuse me, at verse 12, where it talks about forgiving, asking God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And debt can be a very scary thing, as many of you probably know. It can be a very confusing place to be, as some of you well know.

The first time I went to buy a house, I was apparently very ignorant about how it worked. And I found a house and signed the note at my dad’s bank for $83,000 to pay for the house, which to me was just an exorbitant sum of money. But to find a three-bedroom house a mile from the university campus, $83,000, we got it for a steal. And we went in to sign the papers, and they said, now the price of the house is $83,000, but you’re actually borrowing $89,000.

And I thought, okay, that’s where the 4. 25% interest comes on. They just tacked it on, and they divided it up by 30 times 12, whatever that would be, and we make the payments.

Well, I got the statement the first month, and they had told me what the payments were going to be. Every time we went and looked at a house, I asked the realtor, okay, if we bought this house for asking price, what would be the monthly payment on it? What can you estimate it would be?

Well, when they sent the first statement on the house, I looked at it, and it was about what he told us, but I’d never really done the math, and I multiplied it by 12, and I multiplied that by 30, and it came out to something like $180,000 over the 30 years of the loan. I said, wait a minute, that’s more like 125% interest than 4. 25%.

And dad sat down and tried to explain to me how it worked. Okay, that’s fine, I guess. I signed the papers.

I didn’t understand that that’s how it worked. I just thought it was four and a quarter percent on top of it, and then you, yeah, that’s not how it works. And so I found myself thinking, this is not what I thought I was signing up for.

Now, the second time I went to buy a house when we came here, I understood it a little better. I wasn’t as shocked, but I told Christian, we’re going to pay whatever we can extra because I’m not paying twice the amount for the house. Debt is a very scary thing.

And what made it a little less scary was I thought, you know, I know I can make these monthly payments. Debt is even scarier when you realize you have no hope of ever paying it off, that you have no hope whatsoever of even making a dent in what you owe. This morning when I got here before Sunday school, I went on my iPad and tried to pull up the U.

S. national debt clock before Sunday school. Some of you are laughing already.

At the end of Sunday school, the debt clock still hadn’t even pulled up. You could see the outline where it says U. S.

total debt, this per household, all this, interest rates, but the numbers weren’t there yet. It was still trying to catch up and drag in the numbers. That’s pretty sad when the national debt is such that in an hour, the computer can’t calculate it and pull it up off the Internet.

And I needed those numbers for this morning, and I told Ray, I said, well, I might as well just make them up because even if I got them off the debt clock, they’d be wrong by the time I got up to preach anyway. I found the numbers elsewhere, and you’ve probably heard in the news that the U. S.

national debt is $17 trillion. I can’t even count that high. Some of you are shaking your heads in disgust. That’s how I feel.

$17 trillion. And I would imagine that if you started counting from $1 to $17 trillion, you wouldn’t make it before you died. None of us.

I mean, even starting out as young children, I’m sure we don’t have that many seconds in our lives. $17 trillion. What we don’t realize is that by the time we factor in the unfunded liabilities, social security, pensions, that sort of thing, the number rises to $129 trillion.

Now just so we’re clear, that’s 129, 129 with 12 zeros after it. I can’t even fathom that much money. And you factor in the total U.

S. household debt, what we owe on credit cards and mortgages, and we’re looking at around $130 trillion that the people of the United States are in debt. That’s an astronomical economical number, isn’t it?

We have no hope. Let me just say this. We have no hope of ever paying that off.

It’s not going to happen in my lifetime. It won’t happen in my children’s lifetime. When you divide all of that up, and I know I’m throwing a lot of math at you here, it is to make you feel hopeless about it because that goes with the point of the message this morning.

They say there are 317 trillion, or excuse me, 317 million people in the United States. I thought the number was a little higher, but when you divide all of that, you come up with each of us, our share of the total national public debt, unfunded liabilities, and household debt, $410,000 per person. You ready to write your check today?

I’m not ready to pay off my amount. I have no hope of ever paying off my share of the national debt. This country has no hope, I’m sure, at least in our lifetimes, of ever paying off this astronomical debt.

I wanted so badly when each of my kids were born to get them a onesie, even if I had to go have it made if they didn’t make these onesies, have a onesie made for them to wear home from the hospital that said, I was born a quarter of a million dollars in debt and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. Folks, we have no hope of paying off the debt. And when you think of, and this is not a message about the national debt, I promise, but when you think of all the money that we owe to communist China, all of the money that we owe to Japan, all the money that we owe to the Saudis, all the money that we owe all over the world.

It is a scary thing to think we owe all of this money and have no hope of ever paying off this debt we owe. Folks, it’s a sobering thought. Even more sobering though for us should be what the Bible talks about our debt, our sin debt.

We owe a debt, ladies and gentlemen, that we have no hope of ever paying off. In the Lord’s Prayer, after we’ve gone through everything that we’ve talked about over the last few weeks, talking about our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, and talked about the names and titles of God, and what it tells us about how we’re to approach him both as a loving Father, but also a mighty King on both ends of these, and that we’re to approach God on an intimate level, but also take it seriously because he’s the King of the universe. And we talk about praying, thy kingdom come, which means, Lord, as we work for you here, please bless your work.

Please bring more people into the kingdom until it’s time for you to come back in judgment. God, let us get as many people as we can. Let us reach as many people.

Let as many people be spared the coming judgment as possible. By will be done that just the way God’s will is obeyed without question in heaven, it ought to be our intent to see that God’s will is obeyed just as much without question here on earth. And that begins with us, that we need to, folks, as Christians, let’s be honest, we argue with God on a regular basis.

God tells us, I want you to do this, and we try to think, well, I want to do this. How do I get out of this? How do I find a loophole in what God has told me to do?

How do I get around what the scriptures tell me to do? And instead, we need to start in our own lives and say, when God says it, we obey it without question on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.

And we talked last week about how we come to God and we pray realizing that we are completely and utterly dependent on God. We’re completely and utterly dependent on God for salvation. We’re completely and utterly dependent on God for our sustenance and what gets us through each day.

And I’ve told you, and I’ve told you before, that we tend to think we’ve done it ourselves and we’re self-made people. And it’s not true. I’ve not seen the movie, but I’ve been told about the scene many times of an old movie where Jimmy Stewart, I almost said Jimmy Swagger.

I don’t recall him being in any movies. Jimmy Stewart. He was the one from Mr.

Smith Goes to Washington, right? Okay. Make sure I get the names right here.

Where Jimmy Stewart has his family gathered around the table for dinner and they’re praying and he says, you know, basically we planted the food, we tilled the ground, we watered it, we weeded it, but Lord, I guess thank you anyway. Folks, that is a wrong attitude. And we may think we’ve done it ourselves, we’ve built it ourselves.

Everything I have, I’ve worked for, but we seldom stop to think, well, who gave us the back to work with? Who gave us the legs to work with? Who gave us the mind to use?

Who gave us all of that? Because folks, God could shut it down anytime. God could take all of that away from us at any time.

We are completely and utterly dependent on God and his provision for everything that we have. That doesn’t mean, as I said last week, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t sometimes use us as a means toward that provision. It doesn’t mean if I want a sandwich, I sit there in the living room and wait until God levitates one out of the kitchen to me.

You know, he may use my legs to get up and go to the kitchen and fix a sandwich, but folks, ultimately God has provided everything that makes that possible. We are completely and utterly dependent on God, and so we learn about coming to God and being able to ask him for things, but then we come to this matter of forgive us our debts, and we’re getting into some serious business here, as though the rest of it hasn’t been serious up to this point. We begin talking about being indebted.

I don’t know about you, but that changes, it changes the whole dynamic of the situation. When you become indebted to somebody, doesn’t it seem to change everything? At Thanksgiving on Thursday, I heard mention from my sister about a 20 that she loaned me years ago.

So I paid it back. And incidentally, I’ve never said anything about when she was a teenager and I was in college and I used to take her places and buy her things and pay for her dinner after church on Sunday night. And I’ve never said a word about it.

But folks, when you’re indebted to somebody, it changes things. It puts a strain at times. We are indebted because of our sin.

And folks, we have no hope of paying off the sin debt that we owe. And when he tells us to pray and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, first of all, prayer acknowledges the need for forgiveness. Prayer acknowledges that there is a problem, that there is a debt between us, that there is serious business.

It’s not just that our prayer, that our relationship to God isn’t just one where we come to this genie in the sky who grants all of our wishes. And we come to him and say, give us this day our daily bread. And we come to him and say, help us with this.

Help us with that. Do this for me. I want that.

Folks, there’s serious business between us and God. He says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And first of all, this morning, prayer acknowledges the need for forgiveness.

Prayer acknowledges that there is a debt owed, prayer acknowledges that things have not always been right between us. We’re taught to pray, forgive us. And we understand, ladies and gentlemen, what the Bible teaches about boldly coming before the throne.

The Bible tells us that when we approach God in prayer, we are able to come boldly before the throne. But we should not misunderstand that and think that that means we come flippantly or we treat it as a light thing. We come bouncing into the throne.

Hey, what’s up, God? What’s new today? Hey, could I have a new car?

And just treat it like, well, I can’t even think of who I would talk to that way, but just treat it as a light thing. Folks, the Bible tells us to come boldly unto the throne, but it says, come boldly in Hebrews chapter four, let us therefore come boldly unto the throne. Can anybody finish that thought?

The throne of what? The throne of grace, it says. The throne of grace.

Wait a minute, talking about grace here. Grace is God giving us what we don’t deserve. Grace is God giving us what we do not deserve.

So we may come boldly to the throne of grace, not because we’re so wonderful and because we’ve earned our place there, but because Jesus Christ bought forgiveness, bought pardon of sin for everyone who would trust in him. And once we’ve been born again, once we’ve trusted in Christ for our forgiveness and our salvation, we then have the right as adopted sons and daughters of God to come boldly before the throne, but let us not forget that it is the throne of grace, that even being there is not something that we’ve earned, and coming there and asking for God to do things for us or give things to us, folks, we’re coming before the throne of grace, and everything that we’re asking him for are things that we don’t deserve and we haven’t earned. And he says, Come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy.

that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. He mentions grace in there twice, which again is God’s undeserved favor. It’s the things that we have not earned that God gives us anyway.

And he says, come before the throne of grace boldly that we may receive mercy. And mercy and grace are two sides of the same coin, where grace is God giving us what we don’t deserve. Mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve.

Now, as I read through the Bible and begin to understand what I really do deserve, I don’t want justice. I want mercy. Anybody else this morning want mercy instead of justice?

But let’s not just take part of that verse and assume that we come boldly unto the throne, that that means we just bounce in and start making demands of God. We are coming boldly. That means we have the right to approach now because of what Christ has done.

We come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy. There’s a recognition in our coming before the throne of God and a recognition of our coming to Him in prayer that there has been sin in our lives and that in coming to Him, there are things that we deserve that we don’t want and there are things that we need that we don’t deserve. And when we come to God, folks, we need to come to God in acknowledgement that there is a sin debt, that there’s a need for forgiveness, and that’s why He starts out with saying, and forgive us our debts.

We need to be forgiven. Now, I’m not standing here this morning and telling you that as believers, every time we sin, we need to come back and be forgiven in the sense that we were forgiven in the first place. I do not believe that you can lose your salvation.

I’ve spent years studying it from the scriptures. At one point, I thought, okay, what if you could lose your salvation? What are the implications?

Because I looked at several verses and thought, I’m not sure. That sounds like maybe that’s what that teaches. And I’ve got to tell you, that was the most miserable few weeks of my entire life.

The thought that somehow you could lose God’s grace, and then how do you get it back? But the more I’ve read and studied through the scriptures, the things that appear to be teaching that you can lose your salvation, usually are talking about something else. And there are far too many passages in the scriptures that make it abundantly clear that God’s grace is not based on our merit in the first place, and keeping it is not based on our merit afterwards.

That it’s called grace for a reason. And so I’m not telling you, I am not telling you, and I don’t want to be misunderstood on this. I am not saying that we have to come back and constantly ask, forgive us our debts, otherwise there’s no more father-child relationship between us and God, that we’ve somehow lost our salvation, that we’re no longer part of his family.

I’m not talking about asking forgiveness, and I don’t believe this verse is talking about asking forgiveness in order to bring the relationship back. But sometimes there is a need to go back and ask forgiveness that the fellowship might be what it is supposed to be. There are a few times that I got in trouble as a child, as a teenager.

I was not perfect, but I was scared of my parents, and so I did far less to get in trouble than my sister did. Still am to an extent in that frame of mind. Don’t want to disappoint mom and dad.

But there were times that I would do something that I knew I was not supposed to, and would have to come back and be reconciled to my parents, not because I stopped being their son, not because they stopped loving me, but because while this transgression was between us, the fellowship was hindered. And until things were made right, the fellowship was not what it ought to be. Folks, as unsaved people in the state we’re born in, we do need to come to God and ask forgiveness.

Forgive us our debts because we have sinned against God, and that sin needs to be forgiven. that sin needs to be covered under the blood of Jesus, as the Bible says. But once we are believers, once we’ve trusted in Christ, once we’ve been born again, the Bible says God chooses to remember that sin no more.

It’s not that God gets a case of amnesia. God doesn’t forget the sin. And I don’t completely understand how this works, but it’s an important distinction.

God doesn’t forget the sin. God chooses not to remember the sin. And yet, I think of it when we, as believers, sin against God.

I think of it like Adam and Eve in the garden. If you recall, after they ate the fruit that they were not supposed to eat, and God called out to them in the garden, where are you? As though God didn’t know.

Folks, God knew. God knew where they were. God knew everything that had happened.

And yet Adam and Eve said, we’ve sinned against God. And they were ashamed. And they felt the need to hide from God.

And they felt the need to cover themselves. And they hid. And folks, their walk with God was not what it ought to be.

And oftentimes as believers, that sin hinders our walk with God because we realize we’ve done wrong. Most of our problem, do you realize this? Most of our problem as Christians is not that we don’t understand right from wrong.

It’s not that we don’t understand what God expects from us. It’s that we choose to do the opposite anyway. And we know it’s wrong when we do it.

We know it’s wrong afterwards. And yet, instead of coming back and admitting to God, I’ve messed up, I’ve sinned, I was wrong, I need forgiveness. We think, I’m just going to see if I can hide this from God, and I’m going to slink over here and cover up with fig leaves.

It doesn’t work that way. We’re taught to pray for forgiveness. Forgive us our debts, because as we pray, we need to acknowledge the need for forgiveness.

We need to acknowledge that sin is real. We need to acknowledge judgment is real. And in praying this, we are acknowledging the nature of God. And we need to understand. Christians across this country need to understand, again, the nature of God.

that God is not just a cosmic genie. He’s not a Santa Claus figure. He’s not a senile grandfather, as I’ve heard one person describe him, who just loves everybody no matter what they do and hands out gum to all the little children.

Folks, God is holy and just. God is so holy that His holiness is beyond our comprehension. God is without sin. God is, by His very nature, different from us.

And if you’re thinking, I’ve heard this somewhere before. I’ve said this a lot, but it bears repeating. Because I still hear the idea from Christians.

I still hear the idea from myself from time to time. Oh, it’ll be okay. God won’t hate me for that.

Well, I’m not saying God will hate you, but God will be okay with that. It’s just a little this or it’s just a little that. Folks, we serve a holy God.

We serve a God who takes sin seriously. We serve a God who takes sin so seriously that in order to deal with it, He sent His only begotten Son to die for it. And when we pray and acknowledge that there’s a need for forgiveness, we’re also acknowledging the holiness of God and that for God, sin is not something to be trifled with, that it’s something serious.

When we pray, forgive us our debts. Second of all this morning, not only does prayer acknowledge the need for forgiveness, prayer seeks forgiveness of our offenses against God. Prayer seeks forgiveness of our offenses against God.

When I said earlier that there’s a need for forgiveness, folks, we’re not just talking about forgiveness because there was an accident or forgiveness because thoughtlessness, you know, sometimes you’ll, sometimes my son will spill, not sometimes, every time we have a meal, my son will spill his drink. I mean, it’s just, the sun comes up every morning, taxes are due every April 15th, and every time we sit down to eat, he spills his drink. I mean, it’s just set in stone.

And he says, I’m sorry, and sometimes I want to say, then stop doing it. But I know, I know he doesn’t mean to, but he still asks my forgiveness, and I tell him, it’s all right. It’s all right.

Folks, that’s not what we’re talking about when I say in the first point that prayer acknowledges the need for forgiveness. We don’t need forgiveness from God because we slipped up. There was an accident because we accidentally spilled our milk.

Folks, when we sin against God, we do so knowingly and willfully. Now, I think also there’s an element in there of sometimes we’re just not in our right minds. So I don’t know if any of the rest of you ever have this conversation with yourself, but I do.

You sin and then think, why did I do that? What is wrong with me? But folks, we’re not just talking about accidents, things like spilling the milk that we say sorry for.

When we talk about asking God to forgive us our debts, we are talking about the fact that we have committed offenses against a holy God. This word debts doesn’t just mean debts. Like we would incur a debt, we’d take out a mortgage, pay it back, you know, no big deal. This word has so many more shades of meaning that we have sinned against a holy God and that sin has to be paid for and that’s where the debt comes from.

Do you realize that every time we sin, we are sinning against God? You say, well, I may have offended Buford, but he’ll get over it. Or as I’m prone to say, he’ll get over it or he won’t out of my hands either way.

Folks, if I sin and offend Buford, I’m sinning against a holy God. Not that Buford is a holy God, but I’m sinning against God when I sin against my brother. If I called Brother James a bad name, I’m sinning against God.

I haven’t done that, by the way, just so you know. I’ve sinned against God. I think back to the story of David and Bathsheba and Uriah, and it seems like you’ve just recently taught on this in Sunday school.

Now, David sinned grievously. If you’re not familiar with the story, just let me catch you up on it for just a minute. David, the king of Israel, and after everything he did, God still called him a man after his own heart.

There’s hope for the rest of us. But David, who was supposed to be the righteous king of Israel, was supposed to be the leader of God’s people. The passage starts out with, it was the time of year when kings go out to war.

David was supposed to be out commanding his army, and it began with him not being where he was supposed to be. He was instead back at the palace. And he goes out on his rooftop and sees a woman named Bathsheba taking a bath on her roof.

And for years I’ve put all of the blame on David. He should have not been there. And, you know, ultimately he’s responsible for what he did.

But here recently I’ve thought, why was she out taking a bath on the roof? When I take a bath, I lock the bathroom door. I lock the door to my room.

I don’t want anybody walking in on me. Why was she out there taking a bath on the roof? She was probably complicit in this as well, knew what she was doing.

But he still was responsible for what he did, for what he chose to do. He then messes up the next time. Not only did he mess up by not being where he was supposed to be, but then he asked about her.

He asked his men, who is that woman over there? Then he had her brought to him. Ladies and gentlemen, they had an affair, and she became pregnant while her husband was away at war.

And he thought, I’ve got to cover this up. So he calls Uriah, her husband, back into town and says, we’re going to give you a few days off, and tries to get him to go home and be with his wife so they could cover her up and say the child was Uriah’s. But Uriah was an honorable man and said, as long as my troops are sleeping out in the streets, that’s where I’m going to be sleeping and I’m not going to go back to the comforts of my home.

And David said, oh dear, what am I going to do? And so he sends word when Uriah’s unit goes back out to war, Sends word that they’re to send Uriah out to the most violent part of the fighting, and then they are to withdraw from him, leaving him cut off and surrounded by the enemy to be killed. That’s exactly what happened.

So David had an affair with Bathsheba, fathered a child with her, tried to cover it up, and then had her husband murdered. Murdered her husband, not had him murdered, murdered him. So even though it wasn’t his sword, he was in control of doing all of that.

I can think of a lot of people. I can think of a lot of people that David sinned against in this. David sinned against Uriah, obviously.

David sinned against his wife. David sinned against, even if she was complicit, David sinned against Bathsheba in dishonoring her in that way and treating her that way. David sinned against the people of Israel, to whom he was supposed to be a leader, both political, military, and spiritual leader.

But folks, in this, after what he had done, he writes in Psalm chapter 51, if you’d like to turn there with me. Psalm chapter 51, starting in verse 1, says, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Have mercy.

In other words, spare me what I deserve. Not because I’m so good, but he says, according to thy lovingkindness, because God is good. And according to your mercy, blot out, cover up my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions. It was kind of hard not to acknowledge his transgressions because God sent the prophet Nathan to say, you are the man.

God told me what you did. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. Have you ever had one of those instances when you sin and then you just can’t forget about it?

Everybody else in the world may have forgiven you, but you can’t forget about it and let go of what you’ve done. David said, this sin I cannot forget about. I cannot let go of.

It’s ever before me. It’s always on my mind what I’ve done. This is what I want us to see here in verse 4.

Against thee, he’s speaking to God, against thee, thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest and be clear when thou judgest. Hold on just a minute. I listed all of those people that he sinned against. Uriah, Bathsheba, his own wife, his people, and there are probably others that we could name if we knew more about all the people connected to the story. But he says here in verse 4, against thee, thee only, speaking to God, have I sinned?

Now, he’s not saying that he didn’t have anything to apologize about to Bathsheba, to his wife, to the people. He’s not saying there’s no reason to go and ask forgiveness of these people, as though everything was okay in the way he treated them. What he’s saying here is that ultimately, my sin, regardless of who it was committed against, comes down to me and God.

My sin comes down to me and God. That ultimately it is God and his standards that I have violated. See, if I knocked Brother Joe down in the parking lot and took $20 out of his pocket, you’re going to be watching for me, aren’t you?

If I knocked him down in the parking lot and took $20 out of his pocket, yes, I’ve sinned against Brother Joe. But ultimately it was God who said, thou shalt not steal. I’m pretty sure there’s something in there that would indicate I shouldn’t knock him down in the parking lot either. But see, it was God’s law that says, thou shalt not steal. It was God’s law that I violated.

When he had an affair with Bathsheba, it was God’s law he violated. When he had Uriah killed, it was God’s law he violated. When we sin, even if we sin against other people, folks, ultimately, our offense is against God.

That’s why we shouldn’t take it lightly. Any sin, no sin should be taken lightly because even if it’s a small one, even if it’s insignificant, even if it’s something little that the person we did it to overlooks, Folks, we have sinned against a holy God, and prayer seeks forgiveness of our offenses against God. Folks, we need to have the same attitude that David had of acknowledging his transgressions, his sin is ever before him, against thee and thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.

God, all that really matters is where I stand with you. And he says at the end of verse 4 that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Ultimately, he’s admitting that because of what he’s done, whatever God does, however God judges him, whatever God pronounces against him, God is completely justified because he has sinned against God and ultimately only against God.