It Was Up To Our Eyeballs

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As Imagers of God it stands to reason that we would forgive others in the same measure that our Heavenly Father has forgiven us in Christ Jesus.

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Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us day by day our daily bread. AND forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

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(Prayer)
PERSONAL ILLUSTRATION
I started working for pay at pretty early age. My very first job was like Tom Sawyer’s. I painted a neighbor’s picket fence when I was twelve years old and got paid ten dollars for it. But my first job working for a single employer came about when I was fifteen years old. I was hired for the summer by the local golf course as an assistant (slave) to the Green’s Keeper. I loved and hated that job. I started on a Monday, and the first thing the Green’s Keeper did was take me to the mixing pad. What was that, you ask? It was a concrete pad in area about the size of a two car garage. On the pad were three piles. One pile was sand. One pile was a peat moss mix, and the other was plain old dirt. They were HUGE! In the middle of it all was a cement mixer.
The Keeper gave me the ratios and said, “I’ll come back on Friday. Have these piles done by then.”
My first thought was, “How am I going to get home at night?” But what he meant was, this will be your job before we can actually get to the fun stuff.
Now, ther
So, I got to work and turned those three piles in to one massive pile, all by the end of the day that first Friday. The Green’s Keeper was happy. (He didn’t have to do it himself.)
The next Monday we started the fun stuff. He showed me how to aerate the greens without tearing it completely apart. And then, we began moving that pile to the greens one truckload at a time until the pile was gone. I learned things that are still with me to this day, forty-four years later.
And part of it has to do with moving the pile.
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Transition: The pattern of prayer Jesus gave to his disciples had that idea. There is so much good stuff.
We have a Father God
We get to be part of His Kingdom
We get to live according to His will.
He provides everything, beginning with daily bread. We, in turn, get to give it to others because that’s what God’s imagers do.
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BUT for all that to function in God’s order, there are some PILES that have to be moved.

The First Pile is Called MY SIN

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Let’s define some terms.
What is sin?
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A. The Old Testament Gives a very legally-oriented presentation of sin.
1. Sin began as disobedience to God’s command
2. Disobedience manifested through rebellion, which is a “Kicking Against the Goad” idea.
3. Sin is seen as defiling oneself and becoming unclean. Only one who was clean could come into the presence of God.
echoes the OT idea. “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.”
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The First Pile is Called MY SIN

-Sin is BREAKING THE LAW

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B. The New Testament gives a graphic view of what sin is.
The first Greek term is hamartia - ‘to miss the mark’
—This is archery terminology, meaning, one misses the target one is aiming at.
a. The target is God’s holy standard.
“Our Father....Hallowed (HOLY) is Your name.
He is holy. Set apart in perfection, and sovereign above all. His character, His Word, and His standard is to be upheld.
b. But because the first man missed the mark, we have all missed the mark.
For all have sinned and fallen short (the arrow didn’t make it to the target) of God’s glory.
(the arrow didn’t make it to the target) of God’s glory.

First Pile is Called MY SIN

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Sin is “Missing the Mark”

-Sin is FALLING SHORT OF THE STANDARD
But there is an added definition in verse 4.
3. Sin is defined as INDEBTEDNESS
Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
a. Opheilo = to accumulate, to heap up, to make a pile

Sin is one gigantic PILE of disobedience and rebellion

b. We don’t just have one miss....we have tons of misses. Everything we do misses the mark.
“There is none righteous. No not one.”
c. So we have this big pile of wickedness that totally disqualifies us from having a relationship with our Father.
—The mark of holiness is LIFE zoe
— If you miss the mark what do you get? death
“For the wages of sin is death.”
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AND NOW THE FUN STUFF

FORGIVE us our sins

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A. Our Sins Were Prosecuted
—Breaking the law demands prosecution.
—We were tried and found guilty, condemned
—But the debt was paid.
For He made Him who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. 1 Cor. 5:21
—When we called out to Him, He FORGAVE us
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What did that do in GREEK word-picture form?
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B. aphiemi = to forgive, to remit, to remove, to send away
1. Our sins were forgiven
2. Two terms together in a picturesque way

aphiemi —to send away opheilo —the heap

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C. And we are given a HEAP preventative.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

LIFE APPLICATION
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But the Second Pile is of Sins Committed Against Me

Forgive us our sins for we also have forgiven those who are indebted to us

Our heap is gone!
Take Aways and Application
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And it has to do with BECAUSE
Why do we pray this prayer?
BECAUSE......

1. He took Away the Pile

It is gone!
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Separated as far as the east is from the west
He will never point to that pile again!

2. We Must Not Let a New Pile Get Started

For if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This is a “do as often as necessary” application of pile-removal!

For he has delivered you from the power of darkness and conveyed you into the Kingdom of the Son of HIs love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin.

We were delivered, we are being delivered, and we will be delivered.

But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our lord Jesus Christ, For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.

Notice that the symptoms of forgetting that your old sins were cleansed are described as “blindness.”

3. We Are IMAGERS, we forgive others because we look like HIM

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A. God, in his grace, has forgiven us.
B. It is God’s grace that tenderizes our hardened hearts so that we can forgive others. (Aid to the Heidelberg Confession)
C. Grace is conditional in the sense that we can choose to forgive or not to forgive. But if we choose not to forgive, then God’s grace becomes conditional, and we will not be forgiven.
---But I have found this one thing, the tremendous gratitude that I have toward God for forgiving my massive mound of sin propels me into something that would otherwise be impossible.
---It is by God’s grace that we are saved.
---It is through God’s grace that we forgive.
Conclusion
Have you called upon the Lord Jesus Christ?
Are you trying to move a pile that has already been moved?
Are you making a pile out of offenses that have been leveled against you?

LET IT GO

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