This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Sermon on the Mount” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, February 26, 1989.
About this sermon
The fifth petition, on forgiveness, dominates the Lord’s Prayer more than its brief wording suggests, because it compresses Christ’s entire ministry into one request. It keeps all its shock. We forgive as we have been forgiven because of the covenantal grace of union with Christ, and Matthew 18’s unforgiving servant warns against losing sight of that ground.
Sermon transcript
This reading this morning is taken from Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 18. We are reading from verse 21 to the end of the chapter. Listen to the word of God. Shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven.
Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king, which would take account of his servants. When he hath begun to reckon, One was brought unto him which owed him ten thousand talents. But for as much as he had not to pay, the Lord commanded him to be sold at his wife and children all that they had, and payment to be made.
The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. And the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. But the same servant went out and found one of his fellow servants, which owed him a hundred pence. And he laid hand on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou ow’st. And his fellow servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. But he would not, but went and cast him into prison, till he should pay the debt.
So when his fellow servants saw what was done, they were very sorry and came and told unto their Lord all that was done. Then his Lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that death, because thou desirest me. Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on my fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? and his Lord was lost and delivered him to the poor mentors, so he should pay all that was due unto him.
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every man his brother their trespasses.” Then from Matthew chapter six, verse twelve, And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Father what hope have we except your word? The effect is in the convincing of our hearts and minds. So it is, Lord, if we are without faith, we have no faith except by the movement of your spirit and your sovereign disposition. But if we have faith, O Lord, we beseech you that our faith may be found to be strong and active and energetic, alive and alert to the word that you send. Our Father, we pray that with such faith then, informed by your word, we might live, and so please you. To this end, Father, we listen. To this end, Lord, your word is preached. Be pleased, O God, to bless us through Christ. Amen.
Is there a dominant petition? Is there a dominant petition amongst all the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer? Now we have moved in our consideration of these petitions to the latter petition. We have moved from the thy petitions, you know the thy petitions, thy name, thy kingdom, thy will, the opening petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. We have moved from those now to the us and our petitions. Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil. The us petition, the latter petition.
But I ask you, as you survey the petitions, and I count seven of them, I don’t know how many you get. You might get six. I guess that’s the ordinary number. I find seven. I’m comfortable with that, because after all, seven’s the perfect number, and if there are seven petitions, we have the perfect prayer. Makes sense, doesn’t it? All right.
Here we are in the latter petitions, and the question I’m asking this morning, is there a dominant petition? You might not be prepared for this, because you’re thinking, well, if there’s a dominant petition, obviously it’s going to appear in those first three.
The ones that have to do with the sovereignty, the express, explicit sovereignty of God, thy name, thy kingdom, thy will. If there’s to be a dominant petition, obviously we would find it there. But here we are in the latter petition, the us and the our petition of the Lord’s Prayer. And this is the point at which I’m asking the question. Is there a dominant petition?
Let me phrase it differently. Is there a petition that stands out for Jesus? amongst all the visions that are expressed. Well, you see, it appears as if there is one, because there is one upon which he chooses to come after the prayer is concluded. and repetition. Well, the one rep this morning is the fifth edition. Forgive us our debts, we forgive. There is a dominant. According to that position.
And that is underscored also by the structure of the passage In its totality, if we review it, verses 5 through 15, where Jesus specifically is dealing with this whole matter of prayer. There are certain parallels, you see, that are obvious from these verses as we move through them, that in the end convince us that to Jesus mind, this petition is in fact a dominant consideration. Verse 5, Jesus takes on the hypocrites, the ostentatious among the Jews, those who would parade their pious, using them as a sort of a sort of shorthand for Judaism as a whole. Religion expressed and practiced before men for the approval of men and for their congratulations.
Jesus, the Jew, skewers Judaism. Jesus, in that first verse, don’t pray like the hypocrites. There are fifty years for me. This is why I don’t want you to pray like. The pattern repeats itself now, and this is seven and eight for seven. It’s not the Jews this time. It’s the gentleman. He takes on the whole world, the Jews and Gentiles together. I don’t want you to pray like the Gentiles, the pagans, either.
Verse eight, this is why. This is why. He gives the reason. Then we have verses nine through fifteen, and the pattern that we’ve observed in these preceding verses is matched by what we find here. Rather than praying like the hypocrites or the pagans, I want you to pray like this. versus nine through thirteen, and then through the form, he gives the reason. Verses fourteen and fifteen. This is why.
There is then a dominance assigned to this fifth petition. Jesus himself choosing to comment upon it, pushing it to the floor. so that you might get the point, not miss the point. Don’t move through the prayer and miss the power that’s here, that power that is specifically assigned to this fifth petition. For it is here, you see, that what Jesus has to say about prayer will become most oppressive It will assert itself most obviously in the life of his disciples, in the life of his people.
Here’s another passage in Matthew’s Gospel, and I’ll use this as a way of illustration. Some have suggested to us that the Matthew account of Jesus’ life virtually the full of any consideration of salvation by grace salvation through sacrifice, at least until we get to the consideration of the change of the cross itself at the end of the gospel. But up to that point, it moves along the predictable Jewish line. Salvation by works is basically in view, no sacrifice under consideration. But then we come to Matthew chapter twenty, verse twenty-eight. Jesus says, I did not come to be ministered unto but to minister and to give my life a ransom for me.
You see that verse has packed within it the entirety of all that Jesus intends to say and all that Jesus intends to do for his people. It is the compressed statement of the significance of the gospel in its totality. By way of analogy, we move back to chapter six, and we consider the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not just simply that all of prayer is going to be packed into that fifth petition. Now, in some way, I say to you that the entirety of Christ’s ministry, the entirety of what he has come to say and what he has come to do, is packed into that petition.
There is then a comprehensiveness with regard to the whole. The central, if you can speak in both kinds of terms, the dominant petition to the Lord’s Prayer, this fifth petition, don’t pass it by, don’t envelop yourself in a shroud of disinterest. and then glibly contend to itself that when you recite the words of prayer you know what you’re doing. Don’t be so foolish. For though you might deceive yourself, the Lord himself is not deceiving you. the sense you see in which this petition is what it’s all about.
To be sure, the petition startled. Now we might not appreciate how much it startled. Even though when we sit down and think about it we are so far from what it may be true we don’t comprehend the sweet. Of this petition and just how much it did start when it was first of all articulated.
Do you know the disciples? Is there a visit to the disciples in your heart? What are your expectations? What are your hopes? Can you identify with them in any way? Here they are, pure-bred Jews, waiting for the kingdom, looking for the Messiah. When he comes, what’s going to happen? Well, according to them, it’s time for fire. It is time for the consummation. It is time for the end. It is certainly not the day for forgiveness of sins.
Remember the disciples moving to the Samaritan village with Jesus? The Samaritans don’t want to put Jesus and the disciples up, because Jesus has set his faith to go to Jerusalem. Remember what the Sons of Thunder suggest? You want us to call down fire from heaven and consume these people?
Remember Peter and the bug and his story. Time to wield one for the Lord. The Messiah comes, the kingdom comes, it’s not the day of forgiveness and grace. The day of forgiveness and grace has ended. It’s the time to put in the sickle for the gathering of the harvest.
So you see, when Jesus tells them that circumstances are such that they will be compelled to pray this petition, without any apparent end in view. That is startling. You are assigned, my friends, to pray this petition until the end, whenever that may be. Let me suggest to you, it is not yet, but until it comes, this is the petition for you. So it’s sharp. to shock the disciples.
Because of our own expectations, because of our own convictions, and we may well feel ourselves righteous in them, we might feel ourselves move to righteous indignation, to stand with the sons of furnace and call down fire on a few Samaritans that we know. that the problem we go through life and we have all of these confrontations we get into all these battles with people, even in the church, and there seems to be no final resolution to the matter. If God would just send a little fire and consume me on the spot, then I would be vindicated. Then everybody would know that I was right and they were wrong. Right? I’ve certainly wished for a little fire on occasion. Burn them up, Lord. Burn them up. Nothing left but charcoal. But here I am.
Here I am disciplined by this petition. And as much as those emotions rise within me, it’s almost as if I’m being slapped in the face by the prayer and constraint of this prayer. So when the petition startles, and their aspects, certainly their appearance, which continues to startle if we think about them. But the petition even startled the Church in a different way.
Have you ever watched a Calvinist squirm beneath the pressure of his position? It’s very interesting to watch. Now, of course, you know that I’m a rock-ribbed Calvinist, if there ever was one. But it’s interesting to watch the proportions of anguish through which many a Calvinist goes in trying to explain this position. Someone has been introduced to the wonders of the Reformation.
Haven’t we come to accept the fact that salvation is by grace? We look at this petition, we conclude, well, it’s obvious that the forgiveness in view here pertains to the final judgment, does it not? Especially as it’s explicated by Jesus in verses 14 and 15, the last judgment in view, but are we told here that salvation will be granted to me, forgiveness extended to me to the extent to which I have forgiven others? This sounds like salvation by words.
I heard one Calvinist suggest, well, what we need to do is introduce some words here that don’t appear in the text, but you see they’re there nonetheless. Somewhere we need to invent some language to help us out of this problem. So what they do, they say, forgive us our debts as we should have forgiven our debtors. That’s how they were, as we should have done it. Not that we did, not that we succeeded, we’ve got to maintain that message of salvation by grace. So the church, the Reformed church, even a good Lutheran, you know, are impressed by the position. They feel as if they must re-translate, introduce some language in order to save their theological We can’t avoid the causal force of the petition.
Let’s put it plainly. Forgive us our debt, because I don’t see how we can avoid it. I think that’s what the text is saying. I think that that’s what the petition has in mind, especially as Jesus explicates it. our debt, because we have forgiven our debtors.
Yes, the causal force of it cannot be denied, but admitting the causal force does not make us Roman Catholics. Why, it may even make us better Calvinists who admit it. How so? There are certain things that we must always keep in mind as we move through the teachings of our Savior. I have tried to spell that out for you as we’ve gone, have I not?
The difficulty has been, it’s obvious in the way certain criticism of the scriptures has progressed, that there are those, as I suggested before in this message this morning, that look at the Gospel of Matthew as a Jewish exercise until we get to the problem, but let me tell you the problem. So salvation by grace is assumed from the very foundation of that document. There is not one text in the gospel that you can read from what you can extract them to move the message of salvation by great. I tried to prove it to you by way by way of Matthew’s construction of his introduction to this sermon as a whole.
He tells us, Jesus sees the multitude, and when he does, he goes up upon the mountain. I want you to feel the impact of that language. He goes up upon the mountain, and when he sat down, you see what he said? He goes up on the mountain, and when he sat down, by that language that reminds me of Christ going up in his ascension and sitting down at the right hand of God the Father, after the death, after the death on the cross, so that everything that is said in the Sermon on the Mount assumes the cross.
And that’s when we get to the presentation of the Lord’s Prayer. We don’t forget that. The cross undergirds everything that has been said. But even more, the covenant is affirmed. The covenant character of our religion, our relationship to our God, what is at the heart of the covenant?
A union between God and his people, by which, you see, as God has made himself like unto his people, condescending to them in their estate. They now, by the work of his mercy and grace, are becoming like him. And isn’t that what is at work in the fifth edition? The mercies that have been extended to us in the gospel are now being reflected by us in our treatment of others. As we have been forgiven, so we forgive, and so we shall be forgiven in light of our conformity to our Father in Heaven, who has been so absolutely and infinitely merciful towards each one of us. And we have no excuse!
If you’re going to claim that you are in the covenant, that you belong to him, you have to act like him. You have to act like him. And just as he forgave you, so you must forgive others. No, this is not the day for calling down fire out of heaven, to barbecue all your enemies. This is the day for the demonstration of the love of heaven manifest in the cross of Jesus Christ. By such a route, you were forgiven. And now, you see, you are constrained by that to forgive. Indeed, we are saved by faith, not by works. But the faith that saved us works by love. And without works, faith is dead. That’s covenant.
God the great Lord has made himself like you in order to affect your forgiveness and now you in whom salvation has become a reality are living like him. When you have the opportunity to play the role of the sovereign in the forgiving of sins that have been committed against you. I will say it one more time.
You have no excuse. As much as your passion as much as your emotions rise within you and you feel as if you have been violated and wronged and you feel utterly justified in the venom of the vile hatred that is boiling within your soul call it to a halt call it to a halt If you don’t, don’t you hear the plea of Jesus? If you don’t, it is a cancer that will eat you alive. And judgment is the only future that you will know. Unwilling to forgive, you won’t be forgiven. Yes, there is a fire coming. But it might not be the one we expect.
Unify yourself, Lord, in the proclamation of your word. May this petition and all of the petitions grab hold of us. May we be pleased to live in light of the prayers that we are taught to utter. O God, so instruct us that our hearts may be molded in fashion after the heart of our Lord, the one who is gracious to us, And now, because we are loved of Him, we are demonstrating that love and forgiveness to others. We pray these things for the glory of Your name, for the truth of Your kingdom. We pray it, Lord, that we might, in goodness dwell before You, for Christ’s sake. Amen.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.