Reflect God in Forgiveness
A Manual for Kingdom Life • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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On Oct. 2, 2006, 32-year-old Charlie Roberts and his wife, Marie, walked two of their three children to the bus stop and saw them off to school. Marie Roberts headed off to a Bible study, and Charlie Roberts went back home and got his pickup truck and some supplies.
He was a milk tanker truck driver with a regular route through Bart Township, about 12 miles from Lancaster, Pa., so when he arrived at the little one-room schoolhouse at a crossroads known as Nickel Mines at about 10:25 a.m., some of the children there recognized him.
On that day, there were 26 children, ranging in age from 6 to 13, in the schoolhouse, along with their teacher and three adult visitors.
When the young teacher saw that Roberts was armed with a 9-mm handgun, she and her mother, who was visiting that morning, escaped to the home of a neighbor and called 911 while he was distracted.
After they had left, Roberts ordered the other visitors and all of the boys to leave the building, while he lined up the young girls in front of the blackboard at the front of the room. Then, he boarded up the schoolhouse door. The boys who had been freed gathered near one of the outhouses that served Nickel Mines Amish School, and they began to pray.
State troopers arrived at the school at 10:42 a.m., just six minutes or so after the 911 call, and they began trying to talk Roberts into surrendering.
By then, he had already tied the girls’ hands and feet and laid them on the floor in front of the blackboard. "I’m angry at God,” he said, “and I need to punish some Christian girls to get even with Him.”
Nine years earlier, a daughter had been born to Charles and Marie, and that daughter had died just 20 minutes after she was born. He told the girls in the schoolhouse that he was sorry about what he was about to do, but “Im going to make you pay for my daughter.”
Thirteen-year-old Marian Fisher responded, “Shoot me first,” hoping to buy some time for her sister and their friends.
At 11:07 a.m., Roberts began shooting, firing at least 13 rounds from his handgun and at least one shotgun round. By the time the first trooper made it to the window, the shooting had stopped.
Roberts lay dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Marian Fisher and 7-year-old Naomi Ebersol were both declared dead at the scene. Three other girls, one 12 and two 8-year-olds, died at the hospital or on their way there. Five other girls, including Marian Fisher’s younger sister, were injured.
Perhaps you remember this grisly news story, or maybe it’s been lost in the horrible mix of too many other school shootings around this nation.
But if you do remember it, you probably recall it because of one incredible detail: the forgiveness shown by the Amish community in the hours and days following the shooting.
“In the midst of their grief over this shocking loss, the Amish community didn’t cast blame, they didn’t point fingers, they didn’t hold a press conference with attorneys at their sides. Instead, they reached out with grace and compassion toward the killer’s family.
“The afternoon of the shooting an Amish grandfather of one of the girls who was killed expressed forgiveness toward the killer, Charles Roberts. That same day Amish neighbors visited the Roberts family to comfort them in their sorrow and pain.
“Later that week the Roberts family was invited to the funeral of one of the Amish girls who had been killed. And Amish mourners outnumbered the non-Amish at Charles Roberts’ funeral.” (https://lancasterpa.com/amish/amish-forgiveness/)
Marie Roberts later wrote an open letter to the Amish community in Lancaster, Pa., and she thanked them for their forgiveness, grace, mercy, and compassion.
"Your love for our family has helped to provide the healing we so desperately need,” she wrote. “Gifts you've given have touched our hearts in a way no words can describe. Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world, and for this we sincerely thank you.” [McElroy, Damien (October 17, 2006). "Amish killer's widow thanks families of victims for forgiveness". The Daily Telegraph. London, UK. Archived from the original on October 21, 2006. Retrieved August 21, 2021.]
Whatever you might think of the Amish, it is clear that they have much to teach us about reflecting the character of God. They have much to teach us about living as subjects of the kingdom of heaven, even here on our sin-stained, death-cursed earth.
When this shattered Amish community of Nickel Mine, Pa., chose to comfort the family of a mass murderer instead of seeking retribution, they suddenly became a city set on a hill that could not be hidden.
They let their light shine before men in such a way that the world could see their God-given grace, and mercy, and compassion, in such a way that the world could see their Spirit-empowered forgiveness.
When the grandfather of that little girl who was killed by Charlie Roberts expressed his forgiveness, he was living the testimony of one who had been forgiven.
And forgiveness is right at the very core of what it means to be a subject of the kingdom of heaven.
Remember the beatitudes? Blessed are the poor in spirit — the ones who recognize that they don’t have anything to offer God — for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn — those who cry out over the sins of the world and, more importantly, over their own sins — for they shall be comforted. They shall be forgiven.
And people who have been forgiven — people who recognize just how sinful their sins really are, people who realize the great price that was paid to save them from their sins — those people are truly penitent. They are truly repentant.
And God listens to repentant people who come to Him in their brokenness, holding no grudges against those who have wronged them, because they have truly seen and understood that God has held no grudge against them.
Today, we continue our study of the Sermon on the Mount with a look at what’s known as the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew, Chapter 6.
I want to touch on several aspects of this model prayer that Jesus gave to His disciples, but I want to home in on this matter of forgiveness.
So, let’s read this passage — verses 9 through 15 — together this morning.
“Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. ‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. ‘Give us this day our daily bread. ‘And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. ‘And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’ “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
Now, we have looked at this model prayer before, and we could easily devote a week to each of the petitions of this prayer, and each time I study it, I learn something new.
For the purposes of today’s message, I want you to note that it divides into two parts. The three petitions in verses 9 and 10 deal with God’s honor, God’s kingdom, and God’s will.
And the second set of three petitions deals with our human needs, —our physical needs, our spiritual needs and our moral needs.
Remember that the Sermon on the Mount is a countercultural manifesto. “Don’t be like them,” Jesus says over and over.
Don’t be like the Pharisees, who prayed for their own glory. Instead, pray for the glory of God to be manifested on earth as it is in heaven.
And don’t be like the Gentiles or the pagans, who babbled in meaningless repetition, hoping their gods would honor them for their meaningless and thoughtless words heaped up before them.
Instead, pray thoughtfully for the things that you need, recognizing that you are praying to the One who is both transcendently holy and loving Father.
Let’s take the two parts in order, because the order is important. It is right that we who follow Jesus Christ in faith should put matters of His kingdom ahead of our own. “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.”
Now, I want you to recognize that this is a MODEL prayer. Jesus says to “pray, then, in this way,” not “pray these words.” Whenever we recite the Lord’s Prayer mindlessly, we commit the same sin of meaningless repetition as the Gentiles.
As you pray, and as you use this model prayer as a guide to fashion your own prayers, you should be thoughtful about what you are praying and mindful about the One to whom you are praying.
He is the One whose Name is already holy. Holiness is at the core of His character; it is the characteristic from which all his other attributes arise. And so, we who have been adopted as His sons and daughters by grace through faith in His Son should desire most of all that His Name should never be misrepresented.
That’s one of the reasons that it is so disgraceful for Christians — for we who claim the very name of Christ — to sin. When we do, we not only ruin our own “good names,” we also bring disgrace and contempt upon the Name above all names.
How many times have we seen prominent Christians caught in public or private sins and then heard the contempt of the lost world heaped not only upon them but also upon our Savior, in whom there is no spot or blemish?
We subjects of the Kingdom of Heaven are to be people who jealously guard the holiness of God’s name, and we are to be people who eagerly anticipate the inauguration of His Kingdom here on earth.
In the already/not yet tension between the arrival of His kingdom in Jesus’ first advent and the day it will be fulfilled in His second coming, we are to live as ambassadors who display His kingdom values IN a world that we are no longer OF.
We are to be people of salt and light who keep our very hearts pure of anger and lust, who relinquish the right of retribution, who pray for the very people who persecute us.
We are to be people who reflect God in our hearts, in our relationships, in our public worship, in forgiveness, in our private devotion, in our desires, in our concerns, in our self-awareness, and in our righteousness.
Even as we yearn and pray for His kingdom to come in all its fullness and glory, we are to be people who represent God’s kingdom in all we do in the here-and-now.
And as His representatives and his adopted sons and daughters, we are to be people who not only wish for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, but also people who commit to DOING His will.
Remember the beatitude? All those beatitudes point to different parts of the main body of the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the meek — the ones who have submitted their will to the will of God — for they shall inherit the earth.
So, having properly focused our attention on God first, this model prayer now turns to our own needs, and the very first of these next three petitions reminds us that we are to pray for our needs and not our greeds.
“Give us THIS day our daily bread.” Not “give us all that we will need for the year or for the rest of our lives.”
This made a lot more sense to the people of first-century Jerusalem than it does to us today. They were paid each day for their labor, and so they literally lived from day to day. Most of us don’t have that experience, and so most of us think of ourselves as pretty much self-sufficient.
But every good and perfect gift that we have — whether food or clothing or shelter or anything else — comes down from the Father of lights.
And I will tell you today that it would be better for you to be in poverty, living from day to day and from hand to mouth, and recognizing that you are completely dependent upon God in every area of your life, than to be wealthy and thinking that your many blessings have come from your own hand.
So, pray for your physical needs. And pray for your spiritual needs. “Forgive us our debts — our sins — as we have forgiven our debtors.” We’ll talk about this more in a moment.
And pray for your moral needs. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, or from the evil one,” as it can also be translated.
This last petition is a tricky one for translators, because James, the half-brother of Jesus tells us that God does not tempt anyone with evil.
Another translation of the word for “temptation” here could be “testing,” but that raises the question of why we would pray to be delivered from testing if, as James also wrote, we should “count it all joy, my brethren when you meet various trials.”
If trials and testing are good for us, then why would Jesus tell us to pray to be delivered from them?
I think that when we look at the complete petition, along with the rest of Jesus’ teaching, and that of the apostles, we can see that this prayer is along the lines of asking God not to allow us to be overcome by temptation.
“Perhaps we could paraphrase the whole request as ‘Do not allow us so to be led into temptation that it overwhelms us, but rescue us from the evil one’.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 150.]
We know that we will all be tempted. And we also know that we who have followed Jesus in faith have the Spirit of God within us. Perhaps we would all be better off if we would spend more time asking God to strengthen us against temptation through the power of His Holy Spirit.
But our prayers will be ineffective if we are not in fellowship with God.
And it is impossible to be in right fellowship with God if we harbor bitterness against others.
Remember the beatitudes? Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. In other words, blessed are those who recognize the merciful way that God has dealt with them and, as a result, treat others with the same mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. In other words, blessed are those who desire peace so much that they are willing to make peace even with those who have harmed them. That’s just what God did with you if you have been saved.
“Once our eyes have been opened to see the enormity of our offence against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling. If, on the other hand, we have an exaggerated view of the offences of others, it proves that we have minimized our own.” [John R. W. Stott and John R. W. Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7): Christian Counter-Culture, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 149–150.]
We think of the enormity of a crime like that of murdering five little girls in cold blood, and it was, indeed, a horrific and awful offense against them and their families and their community. And make no mistake: God has judged that man for that crime.
But what we sometimes miss is the enormity of our own crimes against a perfect and holy and righteous God, crimes so enormous that the only atonement for them was through the blood of His own Son, Jesus.
If we see our own sin for what it truly is — outright rebellion against our Creator and King — and if we see His forgiveness for what it truly is — divine grace poured out on the undeserving — then how could we ever justify an attitude of unforgiveness for those whose sins against us are, by comparison, so extremely trifling?
Forgiven is the status of a Christian, and forgiveness must be our distinguishing mark. Without it, the Christian can never be in right fellowship with God.
Now, for some of you, you do not have fellowship with God, because you do not have a relationship with Him. Your sin has created a chasm between you and God that you cannot bridge.
No amount of good deeds, no amount of righteous-sounding prayers, can ever bring you into relationship with Him.
He is the God of life, and you are dead in your trespasses. And what kind of relationship can the dead have with the living?
But God knew from before the beginning of time that we all would rebel against Him, that we would choose sin, whose wages is death, over obedience and life in His very presence.
And so, He sent His unique and eternal Son, Jesus Christ, to live a sinless life and then to give Himself as a sacrifice for our sins on a cross at Calvary. He took upon Himself both the sins of all the world and their punishment — separation from the Father with whom He had lived eternally in perfect love and fellowship. The innocent died for the guilty.
And then, on the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead and promised that we who put our faith in Jesus — that He is who He said He is and that He will do what He said He will do — can have eternal life, life the way it was meant to be, in communion with our very creator.
If you have never placed your faith in Jesus, then this model prayer is meaningless to you today, but it can be filled with all the meaning and power that Jesus promised if you will admit your sinfulness, believe that His death and resurrection provide the only way for you to be reconciled to God, and commit yourself to following Him as your Savior and Lord.
You can do that today. There is no more important decision you will make today or for the rest of your life. Come and talk to me during this next song or after the service, and I will help you.