September 23, Outdoor Worship, Church Picnic at the Church, First Day of Autumn

Lesson: Matthew 6.12

Sermon Title: How to Love Debt Free!

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INTRODUCTION:

  1. Speedy (1)

A couple had been debating the purchase of a new auto for weeks. He wanted a new truck. She wanted a fast little sports-like car so she could zip through traffic around town.

He would probably have settled on any beat-up old truck, but everything she seemed to like was way out of their price range.

"Look!" she said. "I want something that goes from 0 to 200 in 4 seconds or less. And my birthday is coming up. You could surprise me."

For her birthday, he bought her a brand new bathroom scale.

Nobody has seen or heard from him since.

    1. Now here is someone who is need of forgiveness.

      1. The husband who was thoughtless and unkind.

      2. The wife who apparently committed murder.

    2. They owe each other a lot, but is it going to get paid?

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MAIN BODY:

  1. The title of this sermon comes from a reminder that we are to owe no one anything accept to love one another.

    1. This is what Paul writes in Romans 13.8-10

8Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. 9The commandments, "You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet"; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law, (Romans 13:8-10, NRSVA).

    1. Debts are a violation of the covenant.

      1. The Old Covenant, the Ten Commandments.

      2. The New Covenant of Jesus in Mark 12.28b-31.

28b"Which commandment is the first of all?" 29Jesus answered, "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' 31The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these," (Mark 12:28-31 (NRSVA

    1. If we are going to love debt free we need to do something about our debts.

      1. This is why we pray in the Lord's Prayer:

12 And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors, (Matthew 6:12, NRSVA).

  1. Why should we seek forgiveness as a way to reduce some debts and eliminate others?

    1. We seek forgiveness because of the necessity of reconciliation.

An example of the depth of change in individual Europeans [after World War II] was the experience of a French woman, Irène Laure, who attended the Caux conference [on reconciliation] in 1947. (2)

She had been in the Resistance when the Germans occupied her country during World War II. Her son had been tortured, her comrades executed. At the end of the war she had wanted Germany wiped from the face of the earth. She became a member of parliament and leader of the Socialist women. She was invited to the Swiss conference and was horrified to find Germans there.

She was challenged with the question: How can you rebuild Europe without the Germans? She retired to her room and for several days and nights thought about whether she would give up her hatred for the sake of the new Europe. When she came out, she asked if she could speak. She did so.

She turned to the Germans in the hall and said, "Please forgive me for my hatred."

A German woman came up from the hall and took her hand. Irène said it felt like 100 kilos being lifted from her shoulders. She went to Germany and repeated her apology, and everywhere she went Germans were willing, as a result, to face up to their past for the first time.

In hatred, Laure came to believe, there were always the seeds of a future war. She would have identified with Semyon Frank's words: "No bombs, not even atomic bombs, none of the cruelties of war cause so much destruction of normal conditions of life or are the cause of so much ruin and evil as the spirit of hatred."

      1. This is a excellent illustration for each of us.

      2. We have been wounded by people.

      3. If we cannot personally reconcile with each of them, we can determine that if the occasion ever arises when we are given the opportunity, we will engage in the task of reconciliation.

    1. We seek forgiveness so that there may be a cleansing of spirit.

      1. We seek forgiveness so that the garbage in the mind may be removed before it explodes.

Les Miserables is a powerful story that illustrates the power of forgiveness and of grace. It has now been turned into a movie, starring Liam Neeson. In Victor Hugo's masterpiece, the police knock on the door of the local bishop. They're accompanied by a scruffy ex-convict, whom only yesterday he had befriended. As thanks for his generosity, the ex-con has stolen most of his silver. What would you do?

The convict's name is Jean Valjean and the man he has stolen from is, as we said, a bishop. But this is no ordinary bishop. He's a radical believer who takes the words of Jesus literally.

So when Valjean is dragged before him holding the stolen silver, the bishop informs the startled police that the silver was a gift. He turns the other cheek by giving Valjean a pair of silver candlesticks as well, and then sets him free.

Later we learn that Valjean had spent 19 years in prison merely for stealing a loaf of bread out of hunger, an injustice that left him deeply embittered. The bishop's act of generosity and grace breaks the cycle of anger and sin.

This is Valjean's first taste of grace, and it transforms him. The ex-convict later shows the same extraordinary forgiveness and grace to someone who wrongs him.

Valjean had a huge trash problem, and fortunately, he had someone to help him get rid of it.

      1. We have a lot of stuff that need to be taken care of.

    1. We seek to forgive ourselves.

Lord, (3)

If you'll forgive me, I'll forgive me.

I know you'll forgive me. That's the easy part. That's what Jesus and the Cross and the Resurrection were all about: Forgiveness.

But forgiving myself--that's another story. I wonder why it's so hard to forgive ourselves. I don't mean giving ourselves another chance. We do that all the time, in so many different ways...we discover the error of our ways and, promising ourselves to do better next time, we 'forgive' ourselves.

But the next time repeats itself, again and again. And each time we go through the same routine--we suffer our brokenness, struggle through pangs of guilt, and forgive ourselves. But we don't really for-give, do we? Or maybe I should say, fore-give. For to fore-give is to give up in advance. To fore-give is to say No to the sin before it pounces; to ward off the anger, to reject the half-truth; to resist the stereotyping. To fore-give is to say No to our brokenness and, just as your Son did, to say Yes to our Resurrection.

Lord,...help us to forgive us our sins, but, more importantly, to fore-give us our sins that we may fore-give those who sin against us. For in the fore-giving is the receiving, and in the receiving is the Resurrection.

    1. We seek forgiveness, to get right with God.

Louis XII of France treated his enemies with kindness and forgiveness after he ascended to the throne? Before coming to power, he had been cast into prison and kept in chains.

Later when he did become king, he was urged to seek revenge but he refused. Instead, he prepared a scroll on which he listed all who had perpetrated crimes against him. Behind every man's name he placed a cross in red ink.

When the guilty heard about this, they feared for their lives and fled.

Then the king explained, "The cross which I drew beside each name was not a sign of punishment, but a pledge of forgiveness extended for the sake of the crucified Savior, who upon his cross forgave his enemies and prayed for them."

      1. Neither do we have a sign of punishment.

      2. We have a sign of forgiveness and reconciliation.

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CONCLUSION:

  1. The prayer is "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."

    1. If we fail to forgive, we will not be forgiven.

    2. It is not that we cannot be forgiven.

    3. It is because the person who will not forgive does not have the spirit by which one asks for forgiveness.

God is in the forgiveness business: A man's shirts were dirty and needed to go to the cleaners. He threw the shirts into the trunk of his car and promptly forgot about them. He also forgot when he changed a flat tire the week before that he had left the jack lying loose in the trunk. Several days passed and the man remembered his shirts and took them to the cleaners.

When he opened the trunk to get the shirts out, they not only had the normal dirtiness but were also streaked by the grease from the jack. They were a mess!

When the he walked into the cleaners with his dirty shirts, he began to apologize for bringing in such filthy clothes. The young lady at the desk broke in abruptly and said, "Don't apologize. That's why we're here! If you could take care of them yourself, you wouldn't need us."

    1. If we could take care of our debts ourselves we would not need assistance.

  1. God is in the forgiveness business.

    1. He helps us to learn to forgive.

    2. He gives us the power to forgive.

    3. He teaches us how to continually apply the principles of forgiveness so that we may love debt free.

AMEN!

1. The Good, Clean Funnies List [gcfl-info@gcfl.net]

2. Michael Henderson, "Forgiveness: A dilemma of democracy," The Way, January 2004, Michaelhenderson.org.uk.

3. Tom O'Donnell, Esq., New Hartford, New York.

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