"Prayer & Our Debts" Matthew 6:12 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew 6, verse 9, often called the Lord's Prayer, could just as easily be called the disciples' prayer.

Matthew 6:9

It's our Lord teaching the disciples, and by extension the thousands of other people out there in the plains of Galilee how to pray.

And he says quite simply, Pray then like this.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Whole books have been written on prayer, and yet this is so fast and rapid fire and succinct.

A handful of verses here express God's desire for how we're supposed to pray.

I read the whole prayer out loud because perhaps if you were following along in your mind, you've memorized this prayer, you might have memorized or heard or projected a different word onto this text for our verse this morning from verse 12.

Forgive us our, and your minds might have said, forgive us our sins, or forgive us our trespasses.

The word here is the word for debts in verse 12.

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

This is a prayer for forgiveness and forgiveness from debts.

Sin is depersonalized.

In our culture, sin has become depersonalized.

Sin is just, you know, it's something everybody sins.

We have diminishing words about sin.

You're a sinner, I'm a sinner.

We're all sinners.

What can you do about it, honestly, huh?

That's kind of the way our attitude is towards sin.

We've lost sight of the fact that sin is against the holy God and that sin demands a punishment from God.

That's the very nature of sin, is God must judge it and punish it.

That's not the way our culture perceives of it.

So sin becomes like a peccadillo kind of thing, like something that's so small and, you know, whatever.

And so I like the word debt here that Jesus uses because the word debt has all sorts of implications to it.

If you are in debt, that means you owe somebody something.

And just think that through for a second.

If you are in debt, you owe somebody.

Let's focus on the somebody right now.

You're not generically in debt.

Every debt you have properly belongs to somebody else.

Your house might be a form of debt.

If you have a housing payment, a mortgage, that house belongs to somebody else.

You owe somebody else money for your house or your car.

You owe somebody else money for your car.

You're in debt because you borrowed something from your neighbor.

You owe your neighbor something.

There's always a person at the other end of a debt.

You're not just generically a debtor, you are a debtor to a specific person.

Moreover, in our culture, we understand debts very well.

There's a whole industry, the debt collection industry.

They come after you.

You have the same last name or half of the same last name as somebody else.

They will pursue you.

You get letters, you get phone calls, they want you to pay that debt.

You can't escape.

So it is with our relationship to God.

Every sin we have done puts us in debt to God.

Not just generically in debt, but in debt to God.

I mean, God creates the world with a sort of covenantal arrangement.

You could say it that way.

God gives you life, breath, and everything.

In exchange, you give him perfect obedience.

He put Adam and Eve in the garden and told them to work the garden, to be fruitful and multiply, to obey his one command not to eat from that tree.

In exchange, God placed them in paradise and gave them their life, their breath, and all things.

That's Paul's language in Acts 17.

And when Adam and Eve sinned, they became debtors.

They owed God obedience.

In exchange, they would have received paradise.

Instead of giving him obedience, they sinned.

And yet God still gave them life, breath, and all things.

Despite their sin, God was still benevolent towards them and kept giving them things.

That only has the effect of increasing their debt.

That increases the delta, so to speak, between what they owed God and what they received from God.

Every act of kindness from God, in that sense, is increasing the debt.

And of course, they didn't sin one time.

They became sinners through that one sin and led lives of sin.

And the same thing could be said for you as well.

You are a debtor.

You owe God everything.

God has given you your life.

God has given you your breath.

God has given you everything you have.

In exchange, you're to offer him perfect obedience.

But you don't do that.

You offer him half-hearted obedience.

You offer him obedience that is sporadic.

On top of your obedience, you also offer him sin.

You rebel against him, you run from him, you refuse to study his word or apply his word.

And so every day that God keeps giving you things and you keep giving him sin, it is a compounding effect.

A compounding effect.

That is true of everybody in the world.

Jesus talked about this in Matthew chapter 5.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike.

Even those who don't believe in Jesus, who don't believe in God, the most staunch atheist or somebody who's part of another religion, they are still in debt to God because God still gives them rain.

God still gives them clothes.

He still gives them food.

He gives them the breath in their lungs.

God keeps giving them those things.

Even if they don't believe in God, they still get to eat.

And every time they eat, it's an expansion of their debt to God.

That's the connection here in verse 11 and 12, by the way.

Verse 11, give us this day our daily bread.

Verse 12, forgive us our debts.

Every day that God gives you food, it's increasing your debt to him because he keeps giving and you're not repaying.

And when you do try to repay, it's corrupted, it's counterfeit money.

It's your own works righteousness, which isn't good for anything.

And so there's a compounding problem.

There's a compounding problem.

You don't have the capacity to work off your debt.

It keeps growing.

That's why the heart of the Christian message is that God does forgive sins in the middle of this prayer.

Every day you eat, every day you sin.

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but you never wake up in the morning and go, I don't need to eat today because I ate yesterday.

I'm good.

Got it covered.

You also never wake up in the morning and say, I don't need to sin today, I sinned yesterday.

In the same way you eat every day, you're gonna sin every day.

And so the debt keeps growing, and in the middle of that is this promise that God can forgive you of your debts.

This is what you're praying for.

God forgives you of your debts.

So you pray to him.

He can erase the debt, he can pay the debt, he can forgive you of your sins by erasing the penalty that you have.

This is why forgiveness is so wrapped up with justification.

Justification is just the Christian word that means God has declared you to be righteous.

God looks at you as a sinner and says, I declare that person to be righteous.

I'm removing their sin and declaring them to be righteous.

They're in a right relationship with me.

Your sin separates you from God.

God has the power and the authority to justify you and put you back in a right relationship with God.

Justification and forgiveness can't be separated.

You cannot be justified without being forgiven of your sin.

And you can't be forgiven of your sin in that sense without being justified.

They're so interwoven with each other.

Just like you can't pay off a debt in this world without paying off your debt.

You don't get the title for your car.

You know, you bought your car uh at the car dealership when you're making payments to Wells Fargo or whatever.

Wells Fargo has your title in some safe somewhere.

You don't get it back from them until you have paid off your debt.

You cannot be in a right relationship with God in the same way until your sins have been paid for, until your debts are forgiven, you cannot be reconciled to God.

And so this is a ubiquitous problem in the world.

This is this transcends cultures.

Every nation, every religion, every language group, every cultural group in the world has some sense of the burden of separation from God, some sense to be made right.

Even those who don't believe in God are weighed down by a sinful conscience, desiring to justify their sin to themselves and to anybody who will listen.

Here's all the platitudes of, you know, I'm just as bad as everybody else, or I'm just as good as everybody else.

If everybody's equally bad, everybody's equally good.

You know, we're all in this together.

Everybody just tries hard.

I'm just like most other people, maybe even a little better.

Thank you.

That has the effect of assuaging the conscience, of diminishing the convicting power of the conscience to make you feel less burdened with your sin.

Other religions will offer, you know, some form of payment of penalty for sin by works, by do this, pray this, do this act, or do this entitlement, even in religions that have some form of reincarnation or recycling through.

You'll have other lives where you can work off this sin.

There's always this idea that you can work off the sin.

You can be better next time.

That whole worldview, which is one of the dominant worldviews in our world, that whole worldview collapses in on itself if you think about it.

And you're gonna be better next time.

No, you're not.

A thousand new lives will have a thousand the same sad endings.

You can be reincarnated a million times, you'll fail a million times.

And do you know anybody that is doing more righteousness than sin?

Of course not.

It's not an exaggeration to say the greatest human need is forgiveness.

The greatest human need is to have your sins forgiven by God so you can be in a right relationship with Him.

And you cannot have your sins forgiven by achieving a spiritual plateau.

There's no spiritual awakening you can encounter.

You can't give money, you can't buy an indulgence, you can't get baptized to have your sins forgiven.

You can't become a member of a church to have your sins forgiven.

You can't fast, you can't pray facing the right direction to have your sins forgiven.

You can't close your eyes, repeat after me, and really, really, really, really, really mean it to have your sins forgiven.

There's nothing you can do that can make your sins be forgiven.

And that's why the gospel message here is so profoundly countercultural.

In the middle of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus says, you can pray for God to forgive your sins.

And the implication here is that God will do that.

Jesus isn't teaching you to pray, you know, a futile prayer.

He's teaching you to pray a prayer that is effective.

So you're gonna pray for God to forgive your sins, and He can and He will.

That's the countercultural narrative of the Bible.

The Bible teaches that God is eager to forgive sins, and that is such a contrast with everything else in the world.

Everybody else keeps a record of wrongs and wants you to pay for it.

Nobody else offers forgiveness like this.

It's jarring.

And we can lose sight of how jarring it is because it's tucked here right in the right after bread.

What's more normal than eating?

And so you go into verse 12 and you just you can miss how jarring it is that God says He can forgive you of your sins.

Listen, your biggest problem in the world is that you need your sins forgiven.

Because you will die and you will stand before God, and he will want an account of your sins.

You are a debtor to him.

And yet God says he can forgive you of your sins.

Other religions might teach you there's a possibility of forgiveness, but it's just not attainable, or it's attainable through your works and your own effort.

And Jesus says, just pray for it.

Pray.

And you can have your sins forgiven.

And this was countercultural in that world.

The Jews rejected this message from top to bottom, really.

The whole Judaic system in Israel at this time really functions to it wouldn't say forgiveness is impossible, but it functioned as a way to teach you practically that, man, you better lead a really, really good life and try really, really hard not to sin, because if you do, you're in trouble.

Think about how the Jewish leaders responded to this message of forgiveness.

In Acts chapter 5, for example, Peter had just been arrested for preaching the gospel in Jerusalem.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

They arrested him, threw him in jail, beat him, told him, hey, don't preach in Jerusalem anymore.

Let him go.

And guess what he did?

Went back to preaching in Jerusalem.

They arrest him again, bring him back before the Sanhedrin.

This is Acts 5, verse 31, and ask Peter, what's the big deal?

Acts 5:31

And Peter responds by saying, God exalted Jesus Christ to his right hand as the Savior to give repentance and the forgiveness of sins to Israel.

That's what Peter said.

I'm doing this because God says he will forgive his people Israel.

The Sanhedrin is the leaders of the Jewish people, and they lost their minds when Peter said that.

Acts chapter 13 is Paul preaching in a Jewish context in Antioch.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

He goes and he's preaching in the synagogue there, and he says, Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man, forgiveness of sin, this man being Jesus, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you.

Paul's saying, I'm telling you, hot off the presses, Jesus can forgive your sins.

And they were astonished by this, as if they had never heard that before.

They they begged him that he would come back on the next Sabbath, come back to the synagogue and keep teaching this.

This is Acts 13, verse 38.

Acts 13:38

They begged Paul that these things might be told on the next Sabbath.

This is the effect of when people hear the message of forgiveness of sins.

I would say the majority of Americans don't understand the importance of that message because they've diminished sin.

So majority of Americans hear about forgiveness of sin, and they're like, meh.

I don't know.

It's not weighing on them, but in the Jewish world, their sin is weighing on them.

So to have Peter, to have Paul show up and say, listen, Jesus will forgive you of your sins, it slaps them upside the head.

They've never heard anything like that.

It's surprising to them.

That's because they understand that our sin grows every day.

And there's nothing we can do to merit forgiveness.

No angel in heaven can forgive you of your sins, no priest behind a wall, no veil, no church council, no pastor of any denomination can take away your guilt or your condemnation.

And yet Jesus simply says, you can pray and have your sins forgiven.

It is a prayer, verse 12.

Forgive us of our debts.

You are a debtor, God is the one who is owed, and yet God is eager to forgive.

A couple observations from this passage about forgiveness.

First, forgiveness comes from God.

Forgiveness comes from God.

This is it's almost axiomatic.

You're praying to God because God is the one who forgives.

Forgiveness comes from God.

This is a very common Old Testament theme.

This is a very common theme in Israel's past.

The Jewish leaders act so surprised by Jesus teaching this, and we'll talk more about that in a few minutes, but this did not come out of left field.

The idea of forgiveness is all over the Bible.

I had a Catholic professor at the University of New Mexico who told me that, you know, forgiveness is a New Testament concept.

This is a religion, professor.

Forgiveness is a New Testament concept.

Old Testament is justice, New Testament forgiveness, very different.

And my mind went to, as a freshman at UNM, my mind went to Psalm 103, the passage we read earlier today for a scripture reading, where God in the very Old Testament passage written by David that God, the Old Testament God, can take your sins as far as the East is from the West.

So I raised my hand in class and said that to the professor who looked at me with a look of pity.

I'm used to that look from professors.

I said, you know, how far is the East from the West?

If you're God, they're right next to each other.

That's what he told me.

It's so critical to that worldview to keep forgiveness out of the Old Testament.

It's an absurd statement.

And of course, we're not relying on Psalm 103.

Forgiveness in the Old Testament is all over the place.

For example, when Adam and Eve sinned, they sinned at one command, don't do this.

They did that one thing they weren't supposed to do.

They went and hid from God, and God came and found them and struck them dead.

No, that's not what he did.

God came and found them, killed the animal, made coverings for them.

This was to show that it was God's desire to forgive.

God didn't have to be persuaded to forgive them.

They didn't have to beg God for forgiveness.

If anything, it was the opposite.

They were hiding from him.

But God is so eager to forgive.

He went and found them.

He pursued them.

In that sense, he is the hound of heaven.

He sets his eyes on people whom he wants to forgive, and he runs after them.

He pursues them.

He catches them and he covers them in his righteousness.

He forgave Adam and Eve of their sin.

That's how the Bible begins.

Moses in the wilderness, when the Israelites were sinning, and when weren't they sinning?

Moses prays to God, God, don't wipe them out.

This is Numbers 14.

God, instead of destroying them, how about this, God?

I have an idea.

Instead of wiping them out, how about you try forgiving them?

And God does indeed forgive them.

Moses wasn't making up that promise.

He was getting it from Exodus chapter 34, which is where God revealed himself to Moses.

Exodus 34 · chapter mention

When God's giving the law to Moses, Yahweh comes down to Moses and proclaims, Yahweh, Yahweh is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

That phrase, steadfast love that says said, covenant love.

God is overflowing with his covenant love and his faithfulness.

He keeps his covenant love for thousands.

What does that look like?

What does God's covenant love towards his people look like?

He forgives iniquity and transgressions and sin.

It's like a thesaurus here.

He's coming up with new words to describe it.

He'll forgive your transgressions, he'll forgive your iniquity, he'll forgive your sin because he is a loving God.

He'll by no means clear the guilty, though.

He'll visit the iniquity of the fathers and the children and the children's children of the third and the fourth generation.

In other words, God is still just, he still punishes sin.

Sin still has consequences.

He doesn't erase it and erase all the effects of it.

No, he forgives it and he punishes it.

And so if you were just left with Exodus 34, you would scratch your head and say, how can both of those two things be?

How can God completely forgive sin to show his covenant love for his people and also completely punish sin all the way down to the generational effects of sin?

How can they both be true?

And of course we'll find out this morning that the Bible answers that question.

But for now, just focus on this part of it.

God tells Moses that he is a faithful, covenant-keeping, loving God who wants to forgive you of your sin.

It's God's own desire, it's who he is.

God is not reluctant to forgive you, he is eager to forgive you.

It's in God's nature to forgive you.

Solomon in 1 Kings 8, when he dedicates the temple, the temple is the house built in Jerusalem for the nations to worship God.

So the eternal God of heaven, from everlasting to everlasting, the God who's before time, the God who's after time, the God who's over time, will have a house on the earth to be worshipped at.

Solom builds that house, dedicates the temple to Yahweh.

Five times in that prayer, Solom prays that the temple would be used to show people they can have their sins forgiven.

It's the most common phrase in the prayer.

Solomon prays that the Jews, as they worship at the temple, would see that they can have their sins forgiven.

That the Jews in exile would see that they could have their sins forgiven.

That the Jews after exile could see that they could have their sins forgiven.

That the nations, when they see the Jews praying towards Jerusalem, that the nations would see they could have their sins forgiven, that the whole world would see they'd have their sins forgiven.

That's his prayer in 1 Kings 8.

Five times.

That covers everyone.

God wants to forgive people of their sins.

Amos 7 verse 2.

Amos 7:2

I mean, I could show you a dozen of these verses, but I'm going to use self-control and only show you 11 of them.

Amos 7, verse 2.

Amos 7:2

Yahweh, our God, our Lord, please forgive, Amos begs.

Otherwise, how can Jacob stand?

He's so small.

I like this verse in isolation right here.

This is Amos gets it.

He's begging God, God, please forgive your people, because otherwise, They don't have any hope.

They are so little.

Jacob here is a word for Israel, of course.

Jacob represents Israel.

Jacob had his name changed to Israel.

Jacob is so little, is so small.

Jacob fought the Lord, wrestled the angel of the Lord.

When the Lord sought to bless Jacob, Jacob wrestled the angel.

That's who the Israelites are, right there.

The angel pins Jacob down, hurts Jacob's leg, and blesses him.

How could Israel stand unless God showed them favor?

Israel have no hope.

They'd be swallowed up by the Ammonites, the Hittites, the Canaanites, the Jebusites, and the smallest little group of people.

The Jebusites, we're a tiny little group of people.

They would defeat the Israelites if God didn't forgive the Israelites of their sin.

David's prayer and Amos' prayer is not that God would give the Israelites a victory, but that God would forgive them of their sin.

That's a way bigger need than victory.

They're so little compared to the other nations.

They're so small.

They're so little compared to God.

What hope would they have if it wasn't God's desire to forgive them?

Fortunately, it is.

Micah 7, 18 has a similar word.

Who is a God like you, Micah says?

Who's a God like you?

Pardoning iniquity, passing over transgression to the remnant of his inheritance.

He hasn't retained his anger forever because he delights in his covenant love.

God is eager.

Notice in Micah 7, it's inside of God.

There's no other God like Yahweh.

How is Yahweh different than all the other gods?

How is Christianity different from every other religion?

This is it right here.

There is no other God like Yahweh because Yahweh wants to forgive people.

It's his desire.

And he doesn't forgive the world.

He doesn't forgive every person in the world of their sins.

Notice who he forgives: the remnant of his inheritance.

The word inheritance there, it's a word for will.

Like we would use a will.

You give off your inheritance through a will and testament.

It's the word used in the Bible for the Old Testament and the New Testament.

It's a very common word.

And it's through God's will that he gives to his people.

It's their inheritance that his people, his children, those who are in union with him through his covenant, has said steadfast love will have their sins forgiven.

Daniel, when he has visited by the angel and he has the vision of the end times in Daniel chapter 9, he's looking forward to the persecution that will come unto the church, the abomination of desolation, the 70th week for Israel's future, all of that.

Daniel 9 · chapter mention

Daniel's looking forward to that.

And you think, why would anybody look forward to that?

Daniel chapter 9, verse 19, he says, Because my people will have their sins forgiven then.

Daniel 9:19

The Jews will come to faith in that time, and they'll have their sins washed away.

They will be forgiven.

Ezra, at the end of the book of Ezra, remember is pulling out his beard.

He's curled up against the temple wall.

He's weeping about the sins of his people.

He can't believe how just all they did to build a new temple, and now his people are back in sin again, and he's just devastated, and he prays to God with confidence that God will hear his prayer and forgive the people for their sins.

I'd be remiss if I didn't look at this verse, Isaiah 55.

Isaiah is such a massive book, so profound.

And you could distill it in many ways through this verse.

If the wicked forsakes his way and the unrighteous man forsakes his thoughts, let him return to Yahweh that he may have compassion on him and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.

So much can be said about this verse, and I don't want to get distracted by all of it, but I do just want to say, notice that Yahweh is just putting it out there.

It's his desire to forgive people of their sins.

They just have to forsake their way.

Turn to him.

Isaiah is hardly alone.

Of course, Ezra, Daniel, Micah, Amos.

What about Jeremiah, the most reluctant prophet?

Jeremiah did not want to be a prophet.

He did not want to be a preacher.

He was drafted by God and he declined.

He was drugged, screaming and kicking into the ministry, through a pit, a well, a cistern.

There's nobody more reluctant than Jeremiah.

And yet this is his charge, God tells him.

Jeremiah chapter 5, verse 1.

Jeremiah 5:1

Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem.

Look and take note.

Search your squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her.

And again, we could be distracted by the relationship of doing justice to forgiveness, and I don't want to get distracted by that this morning.

I just want you to see in this verse how important it is, how eager God is to find somebody to forgive.

He's telling Jeremiah, I want you to run up and down the streets to see if there's somebody I can forgive.

Imagine that.

I tell my kids, I want you to run up and down the cul-de-sac, up and down the stairs of our house.

Find somebody to whom I can give dessert.

This is God's attitude.

He wants to forgive people.

He doesn't have to be persuaded.

And I harp on this because so often we think of God as reluctant to forgive.

I've heard people say, there's no way I can be a Christian because you don't know how badly I've sinned.

As if there's, you know, a line and across from that.

Well, God doesn't want to forgive that sin.

You have to understand that the heart of God and God's very nature is this desire to show his glory by forgiving people of their sin.

It's who God is, he wants to forgive.

The Old Testament offers sins, offers forgiveness from unintentional sins, even.

They'd place their hands on the scapegoat and send it out, and the unintentional sins of the people would be forgiven.

The Old Testament offers forgiveness for intentional sins.

If you sin in this way, turn to God and ask for forgiveness.

Now I did not major in logic, we covered that earlier.

But intentional sins and unintentional sins, that covers it all, isn't it?

That's every sin.

God desires to forgive every single kind of sin.

That's the kind of God we have.

He wants to forgive.

Secondly, forgiveness comes from God, who's eager to forgive.

And secondly, forgiveness comes through Jesus, not through works.

You cannot earn forgiveness.

There's nothing you can do.

And again, this is why Christianity is so fundamentally different than every other religion in the world.

That teaches you sacraments or services or systems that you can do to have your sins forgiven.

Do this, face this way, do that pilgrimage, go see that person, go say this prayer, go do this, Hail Mary, walk up these steps, do this, do the other thing, die and start over again.

Maybe you'll have better luck next time.

I mean, there's so much rig and roll, even with the Pharisaical system, that it makes forgiveness impossible, honestly.

Impossible.

But it does come through Jesus Christ.

You can just draw your eyes over to Matthew chapter 9, a couple chapters over.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

This is after the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus crosses back to his own city, verse 1 says.

That's Capernaum.

Behold, some people brought him a paralytic lying on a bed.

You love Matthew's reader's digest version because you know from Mark and Luke the rest of the story.

Some people, quote, brought Jesus a paralytic.

Well, they brought the dude on a mat, and the room was so full, they burrowed through the roof like hamsters and layered it down, laid the paralytic down at Jesus' feet.

That's how they brought him a paralytic.

Matthew skips all that.

Just, whoa, a paralytic.

Fell through the roof at his feet.

And Jesus saw their faith, the faith of the people who brought them, and said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

That's not why they brought the paralytic, of course.

They brought him there so that he could be healed.

This is what Jesus was doing.

It's after Matthew 8, healing after healing after healing.

They bring the man to the roof, bring him to Jesus, and Jesus says, Your sins are forgiven.

Obviously, that's more important than being able to walk.

Verse 3, the scribes, this is some of the religious leaders, said to themselves, This man is blaspheming.

You gotta love it when Jesus answers questions that they didn't ask out loud.

He read their mail without opening the envelopes.

Notice what their problem is.

They are upset that Jesus is forgiving sins.

They understand the first point that God wants to forgive sins.

It's when Jesus appropriates that to himself that they hit the fire alarm.

What do you mean, you're forgiving sins?

That's blasphemy.

That is against the law, that's deserving of death.

Nobody can forgive sins except God alone.

Tell him later in John's gospel that they want to put him to death because you, being a man, keep making yourself out to be like God.

It's the subtle things like Jesus saying, My name is Yahweh.

Those little subtle hints.

Only God can do that.

What did the paralytic bring to this event here?

What did he offer in exchange for having his sins forgiven?

Nothing.

What did he offer for being able to walk?

What did he provide?

Because Jesus is now going to tell him, if you look down in verse 6, he says to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed and go home.

And he rose and went home.

What did the paralytic bring to his healing?

Nothing except the paralysis that made it necessary.

This is the same way it is with your forgiveness.

What do you bring to your forgiveness?

Nothing except the sin that makes you need it.

He couldn't halfway walk, he couldn't walk towards Jesus.

Who knows if he could even really look at Jesus?

But Jesus forgave him.

He forgave the debt.

Now, this, by the way, is why debt cannot be paid for by your own works.

Your works just exasperate the problem.

Your works increase your debt.

God doesn't take your currency.

You can't, you know, mow your neighbor's grass to have your sins forgiven because you're mowing your neighbor's grass with a sinful motive.

Everything you do is tainted by sin.

And this gets to the wonder of the gospel.

There's a whole field in theology called harmdiology, which is the study of sin.

And when you talk about that, people say, why would you want to study sin?

Like, why don't you study something good, like I don't know, the ocean or something?

Something pretty.

Why would you study harmidiology?

Because the more you know your sin, the more delighted you are to be forgiven of your sin.

This is why total depravity is a glorious doctrine.

Total depravity doesn't mean that you're as evil as you can be, it just means that every area of your life is corrupted by sin.

Even areas you don't know.

Even your good deeds are corrupted by sin.

So you try to do a good deed to pay off your sin.

It's like trying to pay off your credit card bill with checks that bounce back.

It doesn't help your problem, it makes it worse.

You do not have the capacity to pay off your sin.

Our national debt right now is$32 trillion, according to Google on Friday afternoon.

$32 trillion and change.

And I just put in the little Google search bar, what is their national debt question mark?

And like, you know, the Google supplied answer before even the websites said$32 trillion.

And then it had this little factoid, which I found interesting.

It did not double check the math and don't know the worldview behind Google offering it.

I'm sure it's not neutral.

But it suggests that that's$100,000 from every American, including babies and immigrants.

That's a direct quote.

$100,000 for every American.

Now I when I read that, I thought on my little tax form, it's like check here if you want to give a dollar towards it.

Like that dollar towards it ain't gonna help much.

You can't pay it off that way.

That's your works.

You cannot pay off your debt yourself.

You don't have the capacity to do that.

You wanna spit on a three-alarm fire?

That's you trying to work off your sin, your debt towards God.

And yet, every debt is paid.

God will punish every sin.

And this is why Jesus alone can forgive sins.

You can flip back to Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

This is why Jesus alone can forgive sins.

He forgives sins because he is alone has the righteousness to pay for it.

Your sin is against God.

Jesus never sinned.

He's the only person that ever led a perfect life.

He has all the righteousness of heaven because he is God.

All the righteousness of God is properly belongs to Jesus.

It is his.

And then on the cross, as he's suffering as an innocent man, God gives him our guilt.

God punishes him like our sins deserve.

So our guilt is transferred to Jesus.

He suffers and dies in our place.

God pours out the wrath that our sin deserves on Jesus.

Jesus absorbs the wrath of God, is afflicted by the wrath of God, pays for your sin in that sense, and then covers the bill with his own righteousness that he gives in exchange.

He has infinite righteousness, of course, because he's an infinite person.

You have no righteousness, properly speaking, that you can use to pay for your sin.

Jesus does.

He has infinite righteousness, so he can cover your sin and he bears your punishment.

So God can really say that he punishes the guilty.

He punishes every sin by making Jesus guilty, by giving him our sin, by punishing Jesus for our sin, and then Jesus' righteousness covering it.

That's why Jesus can forgive sin.

Nobody else can.

You, if you were to be punished for sin, would be punished for your own sin.

Jesus punished for sin is punished for sin that's not his, but sin that was given to him.

One of the best passages about this.

Psalm 99, verse 8.

Psalms 99:8

Oh Yahweh, you're our God.

You're a forgiving God and an avenger of wrongdoings.

They're both together.

Do you see that?

You are a forgiving God.

God, in his own nature, is a forgiving God.

He wants to forgive.

Also, he will punish every sin and every wrongdoing.

That's his holiness on full display.

They come together at the cross.

Jesus pays for our sin by because he's punished for our sin.

God avenges our sin by punishing his son.

So first, forgiveness comes from God who's eager to forgive.

Second, forgiveness comes through Jesus, not through works.

Third, forgiveness comes by repentance, not by avoidance.

Forgiveness comes and is received by repentance.

Not by avoidance.

The New Testament links repentance and forgiveness so closely.

Earlier I said forgiveness and justification are linked.

Forgiveness and repentance are linked.

So much you can't you can't untangle them.

You can't say your salvation is justification here and forgiveness here and make a hard gap between those two.

That's impossible.

In the same way, you can't say that forgiveness is over here and repentance is over here.

They're two sides of one coin, they're so wrapped up with each other.

Faith is part of that as well.

It's a full package deal, conversion is.

When the Holy Spirit regenerates you and gives you new life, He's giving you faith, He's provoking repentance, He's justifying you.

It's all happening chronologically, it's simultaneous.

And you see this all over the Bible.

Luke chapter 3, verse 3.

Luke 3:3

He being John, this is how Luke begins his gospel.

Really, he being John the Baptist went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Luke begins his gospel with this idea that repentance is so connected to forgiveness.

Do you want forgiveness?

Then you repent.

And it's a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

That doesn't mean that you're baptized in order to be forgiven.

It's a baptism that represents that, shows that, just like you would get a medal for bravery.

You don't get the medal in order to be brave.

You receive the medal for bravery because you were previously brave.

The baptism is because you were previously repentant and had your sins forgiven.

But they're so linked.

Luke ends his gospel similarly, Luke 24, verse 46.

Luke 24:46

This is Jesus, the Rhode Emmaus, saying, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all the nations.

Repentance and forgiveness are so connected.

Earlier we looked at Acts chapter 5, where Peter was speaking to the Sanhedrin again, and he said, God exalted Jesus at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.

Acts 5 · chapter mention

So you can't work for your salvation.

You can't earn your salvation.

It's given to you through Jesus Christ, and it is received through repentance.

You turn from your sin, you're facing sin and running from God, and the Holy Spirit works in your heart and causes you to turn in love towards God.

You express your faith in Jesus Christ.

Your sins are forgiven as you turn from them.

When you put all this together, you recognize what I mean by not avoidance.

The New Testament message is not go and avoid sin and hope for the best.

Go be a good person.

Try your hardest, and when you die, I hope that you did a little bit more good than bad, and the rest cancels out.

That's not the New Testament message.

Remember the woman who came to Jesus when Jesus was invited for dinner at Simon the Pharisee's house?

And this woman comes in as weeping all over Jesus' feet.

What a scene that would have been.

Awkward.

At dinner.

Woman weeping all over his feet and washing his feet with her tears.

And the Pharisee says, What are you doing, Jesus?

If you knew what kind of woman this was, you wouldn't let her be weeping on your feet.

And Jesus remember says, Hey, I came in your house, you didn't wash my feet.

Which is kind of a funny answer, isn't it?

I didn't see you washing my feet.

Don't be mad that she's doing it.

But then he gets to the point.

She has been forgiven much, and so she loves much.

The message wasn't, man, try not to be like her.

Whoa.

The message was if you have sinned greatly, you will be forgiven greatly, and you'll love greatly in response.

In that sense, you think the paralytic was happy that he was paralyzed?

You think after he had his encounter with Jesus and he could walk, they'd eventually, probably not right away, this would be a mature Christian response.

Like, if he is allowed to live for several more years and he's growing in his faith and godliness, I bet he would get to the point where he would say, I praise the Lord that I was paralyzed because through my paralysis I met Jesus.

Again, that's not that's not a baby Christian response.

That's a mature Christian response.

Think you can get there with your sin?

I'm thankful to the Lord that He made me a sinner.

And that before I knew Christ, I sinned greatly.

Because it's through that sin I met Christ.

What a contrast with the Pharisee who's going to the synagogue and the tax collector who's standing off on the side, beating his chest.

The tax collector, the worst of the worst.

And the Pharisee begins his prayer by saying, Lord, I thank you that I'm not like the Gentiles, I'm not like the tax collectors.

I lead a relatively good life.

Praise God.

And who knows if he's even being ironic or not?

He may be very, very sincere.

Like God, I'm actually thankful that I'm not an immoral person, like so many of these other bad sinners out there.

I'm really thankful and I'm giving thanks to God.

I mean, there's a way you could read that, and it's a good prayer.

In contrast, the tax collector is hitting himself and going, I'm I'm so low.

God have mercy on me.

And Jesus just asks a basic question which one of those two do you think experienced forgiveness?

The Pharisee Simon, he didn't need forgiveness.

Because he wasn't a sinner.

Nod, nod, wink, wink.

That woman.

That tax collector.

Put this all together.

Forgiveness comes from God who's eager to forgive.

He's not reluctant to forgive.

He wants to forgive you of your sins.

You might think I've sinned in so many ways, there's no way God could forgive that sin.

Even some believers, I'm sure, are holding on to sins in their life that they don't want to confess to the Lord because they think, if I don't confess it, it didn't happen.

If I don't tell the Lord about it, maybe he'll pretend it doesn't exist too.

But no, the Lord desires to forgive you of your sin.

Confess it to him.

He wants to forgive you your sin.

He can forgive it to you because Jesus died for it.

You can't earn your forgiveness.

It's only given by him.

And he gives it to you through repentance and faith.

Turn from your sin and put your faith in him.

He's eager to forgive you.

If you're a Christian here today, understand, think of how the paralytic story ended.

What Jesus asking, what's it easier to do?

To tell people to walk or to their sins to forgiven?

You know, what is the message of the church?

Why do we exist?

Do we exist to make our country a better place or to celebrate patriotism or to make the neighborhood better?

We could pick up the trash along the creek in Annandale.

To have better schools and education for our kids.

Are those why the church exists?

No.

They're not.

Civics organizations can do that stuff better.

I mean, don't litter along the creek, but you're going to devote yourself to picking up trash along the creek.

There's better groups for it than the church.

There's political groups that do better politics than the church.

Church has one mission: to tell people they can have their sins forgiven.

That's it.

Everything else is just noise.

Even Jesus said, listen, paralytics.

Essential oils can heal paralysis, so I'm told.

But only Jesus can forgive sins.

God, we're grateful that you delight in forgiving sins.

You are a savior by your very nature.

I pray for anybody here who has never had their sins forgiven.

I pray today they would turn to you in faith.

They would confess their sins to you.

And to you, because you're faithful and just and a savior would forgive them of their sins.

Pray for believers here that we would be quick to for to confess our sins to you.

And we would be quick to tell other people how they can have their sins forgiven.

This is our message.

Alone the church has it.

Alone, there's no other savior apart from Christ.

And so he is worthy of all of our worship.

We give him thanks for forgiving us of our sins.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.