There was a closeness between son and father; a bond of love that would make any parent, frankly, jealous. It was almost as if the son’s and dad’s mind and heart and will were fused together. What the dad wanted to do, the son wanted to do. What the dad thought was important, the son took on the same concern. And what touched the dad’s heart, brought the son to tears. It wasn’t as if the son was just mimicking the father, or the son couldn’t think on his own. No, it was a genuine love and a bonded oneness that flowed between the two. And, the dad felt the same way towards his son. What the son wanted to do, so did the father. What the son felt, the father felt. The purposes of the son became the driving desires of the dad. Their closeness was a thing of beauty.
Where you really could see their relationship was when the Son prayed with his Father. Sometimes, the Son would spend all night in prayer, talking with his dad. This wasn’t a burden, but a joy. The Son would get up, we are told, a great deal before day and spend time with his Father in prayer. This wasn’t a heaviness or a tiredness, but an urgent desire to be with his dad. A few of the Son’s prayers are included in the Bible. After presenting a difficult teaching, Jesus prays, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these (truths) from the (so called) wise and understanding and revealed them to (those humble and willing to listen and learn); yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” (Matthew 11:25, 26) (John 5:19, 20) Standing in front of a fresh cave tomb, with a stone in front of the entrance, Jesus looks up towards heaven and says, “Father, thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you hear me always… Then, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” And the dead man came out! (John 11:41 – 43) In the garden, before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus falls to the ground and says to his Father, his Daddy, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup (of crucifixion) pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you want it.” (Matthew 26:39) And again, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”
Here’s an equally amazing thing: Jesus invites us into the intimacy of his bonded closeness with the Heavenly Father. It’s as if Jesus is saying you and I can have the same kind of relationship with the Heavenly Father as Jesus has! What a stunning invitation! To talk to God using the same intimate family term as “Daddy.” To express everything on our mind to God. To take on our Heavenly Father’s concerns, desires, and thoughts. What a privilege.
There’s just one problem. We live in a fractured relationship with God.
Some of us have fractured a bone: finger, ankle, wrist, leg, hip, arm. A bone was broken Take this a step further. A bone is broken inside the body. We can’t tell if it’s broken. Our skin and muscles cover the bone so we can’t see. But, it is fractured. Our relationship to God is fractured. Oh, it may look okay on the outside, but it is fractured, none the less.
You and I, we were built to love and follow God; yet, daily we choose to go our own way. Like a Subaru Legacy that’s built to carry people, but tries desperately to act like a Ford F-150 pick-up truck hauling pig iron, we keep insisting we know what’s best for us, thank you God. So, we follow our own mapped out plans, we follow our own reasoning, and, most of the time, just operate on auto-pilot. It may look like everything is fine between us and God, but there is a fracture in our relationship with God.
The Old Testament talks about this fracture in different ways. It says we have “deviated” from God. We have “missed the mark” of God’s intent. Elsewhere, the Bible says we “rebel” against God’s will, or just disobey. The end result is that our relationship with God is fractured.
God pours down his love and mercy upon us. Patiently He reaches out to us. And, what do we do? We turn away and go our own way. Jesus says that when we pray, we need to confess the fracture between us and God and the specific ways we miss the mark of God’s intent in our lives. We are to pray, “Forgive us our debts…” We are indebted to God. We owe God. “Debt” is a money word. We know how it works. We want something from a store. The sales person gives it to us and we are in debt for what we bought until we pay the credit card company. It doesn’t have to be a debt of money. We borrow a cup of sugar from our neighbor because we ran out in the middle of baking, and next time we’re at the store, we’ll buy enough sugar to pay the neighbor back. We feel indebted until we do. What’s our debt to God? Life, breath, family, food, a roof over our heads, a relationship with God. We owe God everything. How can we pay God back and repair the break?
Hear the prescription in the Old Testament for paying back the debt. In Leviticus 4:27, it says, “If any one person sins, not even realizing it, in doing any one of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done and is guilty, when the thing is known to him he shall bring for his offering a goat….” Rooted deeply with the Old Testament is the concept of our debt to God. We have done wrong. We must pay. Somehow, we must make it right. Offering up an animal in our place is a temporary measure. But that didn’t seem enough. People began to think they way to get rid of the debt owed God was by living right. We must pay for our wrongs by good living, good clean living. As one of the ancient writers about Judaism tells us:
Because the person is judged by the majority (i.e. of his works)…, man always appears to be in part righteous and in part guilty. If he keeps a commandment, well with him, for he has…inclined the scale on the side of merit…” (Theological Workbook of the New Testament, οφειλημα)
So life becomes an obligation to pay God back by living a good life, filled with good deeds. If I am kind enough, honest enough, follow the commandments enough, then the judgment scale tips in my favor.
In a radical way, Jesus changed how we look at our fracture with God. He said there is no way we can make up our wrongs with doing rights. After all, the scale is not piling up our wrongs and measuring them against our rights and looking to see which side has more. No, the scale is God. God in his purity, his holiness, his justice – that is the scale in all its perfectness. There is no way anyone’s life-time of goodness could even begin to stack up against God.
We all fall so far short. Listen to the Bible witness to this: “All have turned aside, together they have gone wrong; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive.” The way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Romans 3:12, 13, 17, 18) These words describe us, you and me. What then brings healing to the fracture between us and God and others? What brings the peace we crave and an end to our anxious guilt? Only the mercy of our Heavenly Father for us, through substituting Jesus in for us. He took the debt we owe, but could never repay, substituting his body for our body, dying in our place. The only thing we can do is trust our sins are forgiven and follow Him instead of ourselves. In Jesus, we are forgiven.
If all this has taken place, back then, on the cross, why then does Jesus tell us that our regular prayers should include asking God to forgive us, “Forgive us our debts….” Because as often as we fracture our relationship with God by not following Him and choosing to go our own way, or just simply ignore God throughout the day and His promptings on us, our relationship becomes broken again. It’s all about the relationship.
That is why confession is so important when we talk to God. That’s why we have a time in worship, right after we praise and adore God to confess our sins, so our relationship can be made right again with God. It’s all about the relationship.
I stole your watch. You don’t even know it. You were washing your hands in the bathroom downstairs and laid it on the side of the sink. Then someone else came in and you turned to say hi, grabbed a towel to wash your hands and didn’t look back. You left it. I took it. I only got a lousy 90 bucks for it. and you have no idea. You come up to me in church, all smiles, hands all out to embrace me. I hug back, but not the inside. I almost said something to you a few weeks ago, but what would I say; “sorry, I stole your watch”? Each week, it gets harder to face you. Now, I see you coming and try to avoid you. I don’t want to talk with you – you just have no idea. You have no idea what I’ve done. I don’t know if it will ever be the same again between us. I want to say something because I get all knotted up inside when I think about it, but I can’t tell you. My pride won’t let me. So, I remain distant from you, avoiding you, because of what I’ve done.
I really haven’t stolen your watch, but what I just told you is true. Our relationship with God needs to come clean, every day. Our sin separates us from God as much as stealing a watch builds a barrier to a friendship. That is why confession is crucial to our prayers, every day.
And, did you notice how Jesus finished off the confession. “Forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12) This doesn’t mean that God will not forgive us until we first forgive others. He doesn’t wait to forgive us, step 2, until we have completed forgiving all others, step 1. What he says is that as we forgive others, God forgives, and as God forgives we forgive others. Commentator Donald Hagner says that “It is unthinkable we can enjoy God’s forgiveness without forgiving others.” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that “the proof we are forgiven is that we forgive others…. Forgiveness doesn’t earn the right to be forgiven, but God only forgives the penitent and a forgiving spirit is one of the chief evidences.” We forgive others, because we recognize and experience the unsurpassed forgiveness of God for us, every day. So important is it that we live a life of generous forgiveness, so important is it that as a church community we give extravagant forgiveness that Jesus goes on to say, “For if you forgive others their sins, also your Father in heaven will forgive you; but, if you do not forgive others, neither will your father forgive your sins.” (v. 14, 15) Of course, we have to be wise in forgiveness. If you crash into me with your bicycle, the next time I see you on your bike, I’ll stay indoors.
The point Jesus makes is that confessing our sins before God and asking for forgiveness is part of learning how to pray. So, let’s pray, shall we? Jesus’ prayer that he prayed, that he gives us to pray, begins with the adoration of God. We bring to our mind some description of God that we praise God for, and then we move into confession. As we pray, I invite you to sit as you normally do, but turn your palms up on your knees, or lean forward in your pew, resting your hands or arms on the pew back in front of you. Prayer invites our focused attention. Let us pray.