I’m going to wrap up our series on The Lord’s Prayer today. As I’ve done a couple of times throughout this series, and that is not to go to The Lord’s Prayer as our scripture verse for the week, but to a related verse that coincides with The Lord’s Prayer. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to 2 Thess. 3, and we’ll read verses 1 through 5.
And as you’re turning there, I am going to go to The Lord’s Prayer scripture briefly, in fact, I’m going to quickly read to you the final two verses: “12 …forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’”
I think you can see how there can be two sermons there. The first verse talks about forgiveness; and the second verse talks about temptation. But, I think you can also see how these two verses go together as well. Temptation and forgiveness go hand in hand. We’ll be tempted, and we’ll sometimes resist–and then we’ll be tempted, and sometimes…we won’t resist. But God is faithful, as John points out in his first epistle.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
In the verses following The Lord’s Prayer, Matthew 6:14-15 says, “14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Harsh words, aren’t they? But you see how asking for forgiveness and forgiving one another go hand in hand? And of course, sin and forgiveness go hand in hand. So as we pray, we should pray that The Lord forgives us as we forgive our debtors or those who have sinned or trespassed against us. Easier said than done, I know. We all know. But it is a command of The Lord because–like every other command, it’s for our own good. God’s commandments are not just commandments because “I’m God and I say so.” They’re commandments because he made humanity work a certain way; and if we adhere to those commands, we’ll live a better, richer, and of course, more holy life that pleases The Lord, ourselves, and one another.
As I did not too long ago, I’m going to tackle the two verses backward. I’m going to look at verse 13, and then verse 14.
Again, verse 13 says, “…lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” When we recite The Lord’s Prayer, we often skip that last descriptive word, “one.” But it’s there, in fact, you could even translate ‘one’ to ‘man’ to be more specific.
Before we look at our scripture out of 2 Thessalonians, I do want to point out that in many translations, the last bit of what we recite in The Lord’s Prayer is not included in many Greek manuscripts.
“For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever is in the manuscripts used to translate the King James, but not in most manuscripts, so a lot of the translators of other, more modern translations don’t include that verse. So, for the sake of time, we’ll not include it either, in this series. But, I will say that even though it is not included in most manuscripts, there is certainly nothing wrong with praising our Lord at the beginning and end of our prayers. And I would encourage giving the Lord a ‘thank you’ in advance, through faith, for answering our prayer at the end of our prayer.
So let’s go to 2 Thessalonians, again chapter 3, verses 1 through 5:
1 As for other matters, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored, just as it was with you. 2 And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil people, for not everyone has faith. 3 But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.4 We have confidence in the Lord that you are doing and will continue to do the things we command. 5 May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance.
There’s a quote that says: The Christian life is not a Church picnic, attending a nice worship service or adopting the power of positive thinking. It’s a battle with an enemy who relentlessly tries to destroy us and the work of God.
We talked about ‘the evil one’ or ‘the evil man’ just a moment ago, and of course, we all know who that ‘evil one’ is. In the context of The Lord’s Prayer, we can see that Satan can use many fiery darts–as Paul says in Ephesians–against us. And we need that shield of faith as part of that full armor. We also need the breastplate of righteousness. You can picture in your mind how the shield is there to protect that breastplate. Paul gives us that illustration of the shield for a reason. It’s not just part of the uniform. Without it, we’ll get chinks in our armor; and if we get enough of those dents and cracks in our armor, the devil will have us. And what are those fiery darts he hurls at us? It can be a number of things–doubt, discouragement, and certainly temptation.
As we just read in 1 John 1:9 “he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Because Jesus told us to pray in the manner in which he did, we can be sure that God is faithful to not just forgive us but to also deliver us from the evil one.
James said, “7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
Tying this in with what Paul said in 2 Thessalonians verse 3, “the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.” The battle is not just the Lord’s, the battle is His and ours to fight together. We have a part to play as we discussed with the armor, but so does God. And He is faithful and just.
Often, when God delivered mankind from an enemy, He commanded his people to do something. The deliverance of the Hebrew slaves was due to God’s miracles, but Moses had to be faithful and confront Pharaoh–10 times. The Hebrews had to put the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. The parting of The Red Sea was God’s faithfulness, but Moses had to lift his staff. The Israelites were delivered from the Philistines, but David had to stand up to Goliath. Jericho’s walls came tumbling down, but Joshua had to lead the troops around the walls seven times.
Deliverance from sin requires us to confront that sin. Sometimes confronting sin is not so easy. Maybe we need to go to counseling, maybe we need confession, or we need to walk into Alcoholics Anonymous, whatever it may be. Hopefully, once my friend Dave is better, we can still start a Celebrate Recovery group here to help those who need deliverance from hurts, habits, and hang-ups.
Deliverance is a partnership with God. Resisting the Devil is a decisive action of warfare. We must stand up to Satan and say, “Never again,” and then take bold steps (sometimes baby steps) toward living a Godly lifestyle. Just as I mentioned not too long ago regarding walking through the valley of the shadow of death, we are to fear no evil. Sure, we may have to walk through and stumble through circumstances conquering The Evil One. But God is by our side. His rod and staff are there to comfort us, and God will sit us down and prepare a table for us in the sight of our enemies.
Going back to Romans 8, verses 31-38 talk about how we are “more than conquerors” through Christ. I’m not going to read all of that to you, but I’ll sum it up into one sentence: “The Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.”
In other words, we are more than conquerors because God is faithful.
And God though is faithful in delivering us from evil, what about the times when we do get those chinks in our armor? What about those times when we are in the darkest valley, and we slip and fall? What then? Is the battle over? Are we stuck in the valley of the shadow of death?
No. We make it through, remember? There’s a written guarantee. If we fall, the battle is not over. We can get back up again. Why? Because “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
I’m reminded of the words that are etched on John Newton’s epitaph. He was the man who wrote “Amazing Grace,” possibly the most famous song ever written. This is what his gravestone says:
John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.
A.W. Tozer once said: “Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
The prophet Micah poetically compared God’s forgiveness as hurling our sins into the depths of the ocean and burying them where they will never surface again.
In Chapter 7, verses 18 and 19, Micah said:
18 Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.
19 You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
Time and time and time again, all throughout the Old and New Testaments, God promises the forgiveness of every sin we make, no matter what it is, no matter how many times we ask. Every single time. He said that the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy of The Holy Spirit, which simply means unbelief. We often think of blasphemy as words that we speak, and that’s partially true.
Jesus clarified that we are guilty of the commandments of murder and adultery not just by doing so, but by what is in our hearts. He also said, “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”
So blasphemy is really an issue of the heart–God isn’t going to forgive us if we don’t believe in his ability to forgive. But is that the only way sin won’t be forgiven? I wish it was.
Matthew 6, verses 14 and 15 again say, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Now, I’m not going to go so far as ‘losing your salvation,’ I believe what that means is that you will not reap the blessings God has for you if you withhold that which God so graciously and undeservingly gives us. It’s fair when you think about it, is it?
Pastor Ray Pritchard says that…
Jesus is telling us that there is a vital link between the way you treat other people and the way God in heaven is going to treat you. Let’s face it. We don’t like that. On one level we tend to think it would be good if we could hate someone for what they did to us and still have the blessings of God, still be filled with the Spirit, still walk in joy every day, still radiate the love of Jesus, and still have our prayers answered. We’d much prefer if we could just have our relationship with God insulated and encapsulated so we could treat other people any way we like. Jesus says, “No deal. You can’t have it that way.” Unless you forgive you will not be forgiven.
How important is forgiveness? Pastor John MacArthur reminds us that:
Our Lord stated that it is so important that it takes priority over everything, even worship. Worshiping God, though living in an unrestored relationship with another believer, is hypocrisy. God would rather see us resolve our differences than receive our offerings as Jesus warned earlier in this sermon declaring…
“If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering. (Mt 5:23, 24– notes).
That, by the way, comes one chapter before The Lord’s Prayer, so here, Jesus is giving us the instruction to forgive one another, then solidifying the importance of that (and sort of twisting our arms a little bit) by adding it into the prayer model in which we ought to pray.
But many of you will say, “You don’t know what so-and-so did to me. It was unthinkable.”
You’re right. I don’t know, and it might have been unthinkable. But how else do you expect to let go of that hurt and anger? Remember when I said that God’s commandments aren’t just commandments, but that they are for our own good?
The Greek word for ‘forgive’ in this passage is aphiemi [ah-fee-am-ee], which literally means, to cast away. Aphiemi conveys the basic idea of an action which causes separation and means to send from one’s self; to forsake; to hurl away; to put away; let alone; disregard; put off…total detachment, total separation from a previous location or condition.
This definition is further illustrated by the way in which God forgives us in Psalm 103:
8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness. 9 He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever. 10 He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His loving kindness toward those who fear Him. 12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. 13 Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
It reminds me of the old sayings, “bury the hatchet” and “water under the bridge.”
I’m not a country music fan, but apparently Garth Brooks wrote a song about burying the hatchet with the handle sticking out of the ground.
Dwight L Moody said that [Forgiveness] is not to bury the hatchet with the handle sticking out of the ground, so you can grasp it the minute you want it. The voice of sin is loud, but the voice of forgiveness is louder.”
And Mark Twain, whose burial place I drive by every day, said, “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the flower leaves on the heel of the one who crushed it.”
But now the question remains, how do we forgive? That’s the big question, isn’t it? For many of us, we have the ability to free ourselves from someone else’s actions. Other times, we have a certain something called a ‘mind.’
Do any of you have one of those? Oh, most of us!
Our minds have a mind of their own, don’t they?
A man who was telling his friend about an argument he’d had with his wife commented, “Oh, how I hate it, every time we have an argument; she gets historical.”
The friend replied, “You mean hysterical.”
“No,” he insisted. “I mean historical. Every time we argue she drags up everything from the past and holds it against me!”
Well, forgiveness is no longer holding that grudge. It’s letting go. To put it another way, here are a few things forgiveness is not.
Forgiveness is Not:
• [Necessarily] FORGETTING: deep hurts can rarely be wiped out of one’s awareness. But with the Lord’s help, we can forget. As I mentioned before, you and The Lord are in this battle together. But you don’t forget first, then forgive. You forgive regardless of whether or not you can forget.
A couple of chapters after The Lord’s Prayer, Peter comes to Jesus and asks, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”
It’s not always because someone keeps sinning against us, sometimes it’s the thought that keeps repeating like a broken record in our heads.
But what if someone keeps sinning against us, then what? Well…
• FORGIVENESS IS NOT RECONCILIATION: reconciliation takes two people, but an injured party can forgive an offender without reconciliation.
• FORGIVENESS IS NOT CONDONING: forgiveness does not necessarily excuse bad or hurtful behavior.
• FORGIVENESS IS NOT DISMISSING: forgiveness involves taking the offense seriously, not passing it off as inconsequential or insignificant.
• FORGIVENESS IS NOT PARDONING: We just saw our president pardon his son not too long ago. A pardon is a legal transaction that releases an offender from the consequences of an action, such as a penalty. Forgiveness is a personal transaction that releases the one offended from the offense. – Adapted from Robert D. Enright
Sometimes, the person who offended us is repentant, and we can reconcile our relationship. But, other times, if someone is unrepentant, we must separate not just the offense, but also ourselves from an unrepentant individual.
Three more quotes before we close, and then a short-short-short story.
William Arthur Ward said, “Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”
C.S. Lewis said, “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.”
Author and Theologian Lewis B. Smedes said, “To forgive is to set a prisoner free, and discover that prisoner was you.”
And D J. De Haan, writing for Our Daily Bread, told the story of Corrie Ten Boom, whose autobiography I have on my shelf and is next in line to read.
He said: Some of life’s hurts are so deep and painful that to forgive the people who caused them seems impossible. Yet Jesus says that we can’t experience His forgiveness if we have an unforgiving spirit.
In World War II, Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsie were arrested for concealing Jews and were sent to a German concentration camp. Betsie died a slow and terrible death as a result of the cruel treatment.
Then, in 1947, Corrie spoke about God’s forgiveness to a church in Munich. Afterward, a man sought her out. She recognized him as one of the guards who had mistreated her and Betsie. He told her that he had become a Christian, and with extended hand he asked for her forgiveness. Corrie struggled with her feelings, but when she recalled the words of Jesus in Matthew 6:15, she knew she had to forgive. She silently prayed, “Jesus, help me!” and thrust her hand into the hand of her former tormentor.
Someone has said, “Forgiveness is not a case of ‘holy amnesia’ that wipes out the past. Instead, it is the experience of healing that drains the poison from the wound.”
God asks us to do for others what He has done for us through Jesus Christ. He’ll give us strength to forgive.
Did you catch that last part? He’ll give us strength to forgive.
Prayer: Dear Lord, as we come before you today, we let go of our own sins–our own hurts, habits, and hang-ups. Those things that keep us chained, those things that only you can free us from. We ask not only for forgiveness but for deliverance as well.
We also know that for you to forgive us, to bestow your grace upon us is not fair, but it is amazing. We do not deserve your loving grace. But we accept it because we need it.
And in doing so, we are reminded that it is fair, therefore, to bestow that grace upon others who have sinned, or transgressed against us. Help us to be able to forgive and forget where it might be beyond our power to do so. We ask for your help in empowering us to forgive the unforgivable in others, and even to forgive the unforgivable in ourselves. In Jesus name, amen.
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