True sons reflect the Father who forgives

Big Idea: Those forgiven in God’s Son forgive like the heavenly Father, but the unforgiving remains unforgiven.

1.      A son’s prayer to cancel his debt

2.      A son cancels debts like his Father

3.      The joy of a debt-free family

Happy Father’s Day!

A special welcome to all the fathers who came today!

What present did you get for Father’s Day?

Who got socks? Anyone? Or a mug?

Thank you to all the children and mothers who went to get something for the fathers!

However, whatever you decided to give, it may not be as big as what a young man called Levi Ohanenye gave to his mother on Christmas morning last year.

Levi gave his mother a folded piece of paper on which was written, “Merry Christmas, thank you for all your sacrifices over these last 25 years and specifically 22 years,"

Levi’s mother, Genny, opened the paper and was in shock.

After a short time, she said, “Oh my Lord, to God be the glory.”

She then thanks her son, telling him “You know you ain’t have to do this,” before repeating “My house paid for. My house paid for. My house paid for.”

Genny had a mortgage that she owed but her son had paid for it, so she doesn’t owe the bank any money!

That’s an amazing gift!

And so, on this Father’s Day, what kind of gift would make the best Father’s Day gift?

What would be the best thing to give to a father today?

That’s what we’re going to explore in today’s Bible passage.

Please open up with me to Matthew chapter 6 beginning from verse 9.

We’ll see three things in today’s passage:

1.      A son’s prayer to cancel his debt

2.      A son cancels debts like his Father

3.      The joy of a debt-free family

Before we look into it, let’s pray, “Father, by your Holy Spirit, please help us to understand your word and your will for us today. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

1.   A son’s prayer to cancel his debt

Today’s passage is found in Matthew chapter six and it’s in the part of the Bible where Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray.

Please look with me at Matthew chapter six verse 9, “Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.”

This prayer will become what’s now known as the Lord’s Prayer.

We won’t go through the whole prayer in detail this week.

Instead, we’ll focus on two main aspects of this: It’s a son’s prayer to cancel his debt. Firstly, Jesus tells his followers to address God as Our Father in Heaven.

Jesus is uniquely the Son of God; Jesus is God’s One and Only Son.

And yet, Jesus invites us to come with Him and call God, Our Father.

God is Jesus’ Father and Jesus’ followers’ Father.

It’s an intimate term for God that no other religion at that time uses in their prayers.

However, though it’s an intimate relationship, Jesus reminds us that it’s not a casual relationship.

He’s God the Father in Heaven.

God is far greater than everyone and everything.

Nothing in all the universe even compares with him, because He’s the God of heaven and we are but tiny, insignificant people on a little rock called Earth.

And so, when we come before Him, we don’t ask for things like riches or even health.

When we come before Him, we ask that His Kingdom come and that His will be done on earth as it in in heaven.

In heaven, God’s rule is absolute, and His will is carried out without question.

When we come to Him, we ask that on this little planet we call Earth, where tiny people shake their fists at Him, that God will rule absolutely and that His will be carried out without fail, just as it is in heaven.

We pray that He will give us our daily bread, so that we have enough supplies, one day at a time.

And we pray that God will forgive us our debts.

Literally, it’s asking God to cancel our debts, just as we cancel the debts of others.

That’s how Jesus describes our relationship with God.

We have a debt that we owe God.

In other translations, it’s rightly translated as “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive the sins of those who sin against us.”

The Bible describes this debt that we owe to God as sin.

And since we have this sin, since we have this debt that we owe God, only God himself can forgive.

Only God himself can cancel the debt.

Only God himself can forgive us because ultimately, it’s to him that we’ve sinned against, it’s to him that we owe a great debt.

Now there are people, including Christians, who don’t see that this is a big deal.

God is loving, God is kind! And so, of course, he should forgive.

In fact, he should forgive everybody; everyone should be forgiven.

And so, why doesn’t God forgive everyone?

Someone who talks like this almost certainly hasn’t had the painful experience of being sinned against.

In 1943, at the height of World War 2, a Jewish prisoner by the name of Wiesenthal was working in a Nazi concentration camp.

One day, a nurse took him to the bedside of a dying SS trooper, Karl Seidl.

Karl Seidl confessed to horrific war crimes he committed against many Jews. He was about to die, but he could not die in peace until a Jew, any Jew, forgives him.

Wiesenthal the Jew stood for a while, said nothing, then walked away.

Later on, he reflected on this and said of the Nazi soldier, ‘He was sent to God unforgiven by me’.

He then wrote this account in a book called Sunflower and asked his readers, ‘Had I done the right thing?’

How about you? What would you have done?

Would you forgive, or not forgive?’

While not many of us would face dilemmas like this, we still face dilemmas that make forgiveness very difficult, don’t we?

A careless act when changing lanes while driving on a highway can cause serious hurt and damage to innocent people.

Should we forgive someone who caused an innocent driver to be hospitalised?

Or how about a husband who betrayed his wife and left his family?

Should he be forgiven?

Or a son who had gambled his parents’ life savings away? Should the gambling son be forgiven?

Would you forgive or not forgive?

Whenever someone has done something against us, we feel that they owe us an apology, a payment for what they’ve cost us, or even a lifetime in jail for what they’ve done to our loved ones.

That’s what happened with our relationship to God.

God made us, loved us, and gave us life.

We owe him all our love and all our obedience, but we neither love him nor obey him.

Instead, we love ourselves, we love the things of this world, and we turned our backs on him.

We are like the Prodigal Son, who took his father’s inheritance and left the father behind.

There is a Chinese saying: 認賊作父.

It describes a son who would rather obey the enemy rather than his own father.

In Chinese culture, this is a pretty bad thing; it’s like an unforgivable sin.

But that’s what we did against God.

God knows everything about us; he sees all the darkness and evil inside of us.

To the Holy God, whose Kingdom is in heaven, we commit unforgivable sins every day.

For all the unforgivable sins we’ve committed, we deserve death and hell.

God would be right to send us all to hell; God doesn’t need to forgive anyone or save anyone.

He owes forgiveness to nobody.

And yet, God is the loving Father who would not let us go.

He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, to pay for the debt that neither you nor I can pay for.

This is what the Bible says in Romans chapter 5 verse 8, “But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Jesus was perfect.

Unlike us, Jesus owed God nothing.

God knows everything about Him and sees no fault, no sin.

Just like God the Father Himself, Jesus God the Son is Perfect.

And yet, to show his love for us, God the Father gave His own Son, even while we were still His enemies.

That’s how much God loved the world, He gave His Own Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but will have eternal life.

That is, for those of us who believe in Jesus, God has cancelled our debt.

It’s as if He had torn our debt certificate apart and nailed it to the cross of Jesus.

That’s the Gospel, the good news of the Lord Jesus.

That’s why Christians keep on talking about the cross of Jesus, for it’s on the cross of Jesus that God has shown his infinite mercy on those who put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s on the cross that God has cancelled our debt.

It’s through what Jesus did on the cross that God forgives us our sins.

2.   A son cancels debts like his Father

And as brilliant as the cross of Jesus is, the good news of Jesus didn’t end with his death on the cross!

Three days after Jesus died on the cross, Jesus rose from the dead to show us that there’s now hope for those who have put their trust in Him.

Not only has God saved us from death and hell, but He has also given us a new life as well as the hope of being in heaven with him.

It’s because Jesus has both died and risen from the dead that His followers can live a new life.

We can live as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father.

We used to live lives that pleased the enemies of God.

But now, by the life that Jesus gives, we can live as sons and daughters of God.

When I went to the Young Adults camp a few weeks ago, my friend Brendan brought his kids, and I brought my kids as well.

If you know Brendan, you know that he’s a good-looking man, even if he doesn’t have any hair.

One of his sons, however, has long curly hair.

At first sight you look at them and you might think, are they even related?

As if to prove that he’s really the father, Brendan took his phone out and showed me a picture of him when he was his son’s age.

And guess what, he had long curly hair as well.

Brendan and his son looked almost identical.

If Brendan’s son wants to know what he’ll look like in about 30 years’ time, all he had to do is take a look at his dad.

After Jesus rose from the dead, He told His disciples in John 20:17 that He was going to His Father and the disciples’ Father, to His God and the disciples’ God.

Through His death and resurrection from the dead, Jesus has now brought His disciples and all those who believe in Him into the family of God the Father.

That’s why Christians can call God Father in our prayers.

Just as Jesus called God Father, we are now to call God Our Father.

As children of the Father, he’s given us all that we need to live the kind of life that’s to be expected of His children.

There are many aspects of God that we want to show in our lives, but one that Jesus especially emphasises is the way God forgives.

For Jesus tells us to pray and ask God to forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

We sin against God every day and we ask God to forgive us all our sins, to wipe our plates clean.

That’s a lot to ask of God but nothing’s too hard for God.

However, our prayer is not simply to ask God to forgive us our sins but to ask that he forgives us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.

That’s not to say that we have to do the hard work of forgiving everyone who had ever sinned against us in order for God to forgive us.

God’s mercy to us cannot be earned, even by the way we forgive others.

Rather, it’s a warning for those who think they can be forgiven by God and yet be unforgiving towards others.

You cannot ask God to forgive you and be unforgiving.

In Matthew chapter eighteen, Jesus tells of a parable of a servant who owed his king 10,000 talents. In those days, 1 talent is about 6,000 days’ work.

And so, a person who owed 10,000 owed 6,000 times 10,000, which equates to 6,000,000 days’ worth.

That’s 16,438 years’ worth of work, with no leave in between.

The king brought him in and was about to put him into prison and sell his family and everything he had to pay for his debt.

The man begged for mercy and said he would pay back everything.

Everything? Really?

As absurd as that answer was, the king decided to be merciful and let the servant go.

However, when he went out, he saw a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii, or one hundred days of work.

It was still a big amount but it was very possible for that amount that to be paid back.

Instead of showing mercy, the first servant took his fellow servant to prison.

When the King found out, he was angry and locked the first servant in prison until he could pay back everything, which meant he would be spending the rest of his life in prison.

And Jesus ends with these words, “So also my heavenly Father will do to you unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister from your heart.”

If someone has been forgiven by God the Father in Jesus Christ, he or she would have understood how great God’s mercy was to forgive someone like them.

Whatever sin someone has committed against them, they knew it would be small compared with all their sins against God.

However, the person who claimed to have understood God’s forgiveness and yet remains unforgiving shows that they had not understood God’s forgiveness at all.

Despite what they claim, they are still unforgiven before God, they still have a debt that they owe God and God would lock them up not only for a lifetime but for an eternity for all that they owe him.

3.   The joy of a debt-free family

As hard as it is to forgive sometimes, God’s children, those who truly belong to him, will choose the path of forgiveness.

Whenever we feel like we can’t forgive, we must turn to the cross of Jesus and see God’s forgiveness displayed.

As we stand in the shadow of the cross, we pray that God will give us His power and His strength, so that we will forgive.

This is the family trait of those who belong to God – like God the Father, we will forgive.

Listen to what the Bible tells us in Ephesians 4:32-5:2, “And be kind  and compassionate  to one another, forgiving  one another, just as God also forgave you  in Christ. Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, 2 and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us,  a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.”

If God’s children have truly understood that they’ve been forgiven by God, they will forgive their brothers and sisters.

For forgiveness is the family trait of God.

Sadly, one of the places where it’s often the hardest to find forgiveness is the family.

There are many families that are broken or fractured and they remain so for many years because a father, a son, a daughter or a mother refuses to forgive. However, every now and then, in the middle of human sin and darkness, the light of Christ shines.

A good friend of mine had a wonderful upbringing until he was in his late teens.

It was in his late teens that they found out that his father had been secretly mishandling the family’s finances, and he fled the family as a result.

Even worse, he had left his wife and his four children bankrupt.

And one of the worst part was that this family was like a pillar in a local Church community.

How could a Christian leader do this to his family?

My friend was heartbroken but he kept trusting in God, working to support his family while studying through university.

Even though it would’ve been hard for his family, he decided to go into full-time ministry.

With his mother’s blessings, he went to Bible College and became a minister.

In the last few years, he found out that his father was very sick.

Rather than avoiding him, my friend went to the hospital regularly to look after him.

Towards the end of his father’s life, he even helped his father to trust in the Lord again.

Friends, that’s the incredible power of God’s forgiveness.

Some people mistakenly think that it’s the strong who hold a grudge for years and it’s the weak who forgive.

No, it’s actually the other way around.

It’s the strong who forgive and the weak who remain unforgiving.

For to forgive is to be like God. Forgiveness is God-like.

To forgive is to cancel the debt that a sinner owes you.

Now that doesn’t mean that you pretend that those sins don’t hurt.

However, to forgive means that you confront the sin of the sinner, not to make yourself feel better, and not even to make yourself heard, but to try to reconcile the relationship.

If you have been sinned against, it will cost you to forgive.

After all, it’s the sinner who owes a debt to the person whom he has sinned against.

There’s always a cost to forgiving someone, to cancel the debt that the sinner owed.

The person who had been sinned against had already paid the cost of the sin against their will.

And so, to forgive someone, to cancel their debt, will always involve a cost, either to our pride, our damages, our reputations and even our health.

And if we’re true to ourselves, we know that we don’t have the strength in us to pay the price of forgiveness.

That’s why we must always come back to Jesus and ask him to give us the strength we need to forgive.

As the Archbishop Kanishka Raffel had put so well, “We cannot forgive out of our own strength. That would be foolish, proud and fruitless. We dare to forgive only because of the grace we have known in the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ, through which he lives in us.”

But that’s what we come to do as a Church; we come because we know the forgiveness of God through Jesus Christ.

We live as a family who forgives. We forgive one another by the strength that God’s given us.

That’s the beauty and wonder of the local Christian Church.

Do you want to see what the most God-like Church looks like?

The most God-like Church is not one with the most tallest steeple.

The most God-like Church is not the one with the most people or even the one with the best teaching programme.

The most God-like Church is the one where you find Christians forgiving one another.

The most God-like Church is the one where we cancel one another’s debts, just as God in Christ has cancelled their debt.

Where you find God’s forgiveness received, there you will find the joy of a debt-free family

Better still, where you find God’s forgiveness imitated, as a child imitates his father, there you will find a God-like Church, a debt-free family.

We are debt-free, not because we’re rich or because they’re sinless.

Rather, we are debt-free because Christ has paid the debt to make us free of our debts to God and so they won’t keep an account of the debts that others owe us.

It’s a little like this:

In 1944, Dutch woman Corrie ten Boom was released from Ravensbruck concentration camp.

Corrie was a Christian, and after the end of World War II she started sharing in meetings about the forgiveness that can only be found in Christ. 

In one of these meetings, a man who used to be one of the camp guards came to her and he said, “Fraulein, will you forgive me?”

She felt incapable of forgiveness but, so she prayed, “Jesus, help me”. 

She wrote afterwards that a healing warmth then flooded her being, and with tears in her eyes she grasped his hand and said: “I forgive you, brother! With all my heart”.

That’s the power of Christ’s forgiveness. It has the liberating power to cancel the debt of sinners, both the debt that all of us owe God and the debt that those who has sinned against us owe us.

It brings joy to those who are in God’s debt-free family.

What’s the best Father’s Day Gift?

The Best Father’s Day present is to be forgiven by God the Father in Jesus Christ.

There’s no greater joy than to know that all our sins, all our debts, had been paid for by the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you haven’t received God’s forgiveness yet, then please don’t delay.

If you want to receive God’s forgiveness, I’ll say a prayer in a moment’s time.

But before we pray, I want to mention another great Father’s Day gift that’s second to the first one but related to it.

If you are forgiven in Jesus, and you are still holding a grudge against someone, if you are still unforgiving, forgive that person today.

Forgive them, reconcile with them, as Jesus’ said, “For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well.a 15 But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.” Matthew 6:14-15.

To be forgiven by someone we sinned against, as well as to forgive someone who have sinned against us, are beautiful gifts to give on this Father’s Day.

That person may be a friend, a family member.

That person may even be a father, or a son, a mother, or a daughter.

Find them, talk with them, and forgive them today.

Remember:

Those forgiven in God’s Son forgive like the heavenly Father, but the unforgiving remains unforgiven.

Earlier this year, Erin Patterson was charged with the murder of her father-in-law, her mother-in-law and the sister of her mother-in-law, Heather Wilkinson.

At Erin Patterson’s trial, Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, a Christian pastor said,

“In regard to the many harms done to me l make an offer of forgiveness to Erin... No longer am l a victim of Erin Patterson, now she is a victim of my kindness.”

Ian is a man who knows God’s forgiveness and chose God’s way of forgiveness.

Do you know the power of God’s forgiveness?

As we finish off, here are three questions for us to think about.

1.    How does the Bible’s definition of sin as debt help us think about our relationship with God and others?

2.    Why is the temptation of being unforgiving so powerful?

3.    In what way are forgiven Christians who forgive are more powerful than the unforgiving?

Those forgiven in God’s Son forgive like the heavenly Father, but the unforgiving remains unforgiven.

If you haven’t come to God and ask his forgiveness yet, now’s the time to do so.

I’m going to slowly say the prayer that’s printed on this screen slowly.

If you agree with what I’m about to say, then say it with me in your heart.

Let’s pray, “Our Father, who are in heaven, let your name be honoured as holy. Father, I am sorry that I haven’t loved and obeyed you as I should. There’s nothing that I could do to repay the honour and love that I owe you. Thank you for sending Jesus to die a death I could not die and to pay a debt that I could not pay. Father, please forgive me, cancel my debt, that I might be free to follow Jesus. And please help me to forgive as you have forgiven me. I pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.”