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[ Silence ] [MUSIC] Just the first stanza. [MUSIC]

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♪ All our sins and grief to bear ♪ ♪ What a privilege to carry ♪ ♪ Everything to God in prayer ♪ ♪ Oh, what means we often forget ♪

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♪ Oh what needless pain we bear ♪ ♪ Oh because we do not carry ♪ ♪ Everything to God in prayer ♪ - You may be seated.

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Let us bow in silent prayer. Speak to our hearts, O God. And may we have listening ears. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

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- Amen. - For several weeks now, We have been engaged in Simon's series based on the Lord's prayer. We come today to consider that petition which is found in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the sixth chapter, and the twelfth verse.

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and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. We hear two versions of this particular petition. One is forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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And the other is forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And what version that is used depends upon the persons that you are with or the particular religious communion that you are with. When I was in seminary, this was a discussion among the seminary professors. We had professors who belonged to different communions.

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One was the Church of England. He was an Anglican. So he wanted to use, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

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Another was a member of the disciples of Christ. Another was a member of the Methodist church, two or three Methodists. They wanted to use,

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forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And the report comes that the one who insisted on forgive us our trespasses and refused to agree to use forgive us our debts, He said that it seems to him that forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors seems to put, to have our dealings with the Lord on too commercial a basis.

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And so we went on with one using one and another using another when we had our prayer periods in chapel. But today I want to lift up this prayer in our message and possibly say a word about both of them. forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. At the introduction of this particular passage, Jesus is praying

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and his disciples took particular notice of him as he engaged in prayer And later we find them saying to him, "Lord, teach us to pray." As John taught his disciples to pray. And Jesus taught them what we call the model prayer.

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It's the model that when you pray, say this, this, our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name by the kingdom come. And so, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. That is a petition. We're accustomed to asking the Lord for a lot of things

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that we ought to leave alone. But we ask him anyhow. But he's given us here, and within this brief prayer, a catalog of things to ask for.

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And if we obey, there is within this petition a guarantee, a blessed assurance, as the old folk would put it, that God will hear you when you pray. If you pray and pray right, he will hear the request.

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So we're all debtors. - Amen. - We owe debts we can never fully repay. - That's right.

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- Amen. - Yes. - We owe a debt to ourselves because as was expressed in the prayer,

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we are all stewards. - Amen. And the first obligation we have to the Creator is to take good care of ourselves.

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- Yes. - Yes. - Yes. - The fact that we are stewards not only means

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that we should take good care of ourselves, we should be careful about how we treat other people. We have certain relationship, a right relationship that we ought to have with ourselves,

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a right relationship we ought to have with others, and a right relationship we should have with God. He is over us all. And that first one is taking good care of yourself.

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I was talking with Dr. Howard Thurman, that great theologian, a few years ago. We were out on Bishop College campus and I had the opportunity of engaging in a conversation

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with him that lasted for some time. And I said, "Dr. Thurman, how do you arrange to do all of the things you do? You're an outstanding theologian,

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you're a professor at a leading theological seminary, and you write many books, you travel, how do you arrange that?" He said, "Well, in my office," he said,

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I have it so arranged that I say that there is a certain time that is reserved for Howard Thurman. That's for me. And he uses that time in which to do many things that he would otherwise not be able to do if he had not reserved that time for Howard Thurman. So forgive us our debts.

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This is a recognition of the fact that life is alone. It's alone. God has permitted us every day that we have in this world is just a payment.

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It's just an installment payment on that loan. When I was a boy, we didn't have much opportunity to go and buy things, cash. But if I was getting a new suit,

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mother would take me down and we would pick out the suit and we would make a small down payment and pay on it each week, sometimes a dollar or two a week. There was a lot of money in those days

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until we got it out. So your life and mine is a loan, and every day we're making a payment on that loan. - Every day.

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- Yes, yes. - And God is concerned about how we pay back that loan. We have to account to him as to what we do and how we do it in taking care of that loan.

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As one banker said to me, when I was making arrangements about a purchase of the first car. I was given a third of the payment down in those days. And when we signed all the papers

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and I went out to get the car, he said, "Now take good care of this loan." He acted as if he were doing me a favor. Now banks couldn't exist without people borrowing,

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but that's not the case with God. - Amen. In other words, he doesn't need our money to exist, but we need it and we need to use it in such a way

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that it cultivates our lives. We cultivate the spirit of giving and we enrich our lives when we recognize the fact fact that we are all debtors.

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As the old popular song a few years ago would put it, we are debtors and we are another day older and deeper in debt. Forgive us our debtors.

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Now this petition is addressed to God And our greatest sin is against God. Our greatest sin. He's the one who created us,

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he's the one who sustains us, and he is the one to whom we must account in the final analysis. Not to the preacher, not to the choir,

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not to the deacons, but to God. We must account to him. And we live in an economy of abundance. We have it all around us.

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When we look in the stores with all of the displays, they are designed psychologically to appeal to us in such a way that we'll want to get much more than we can afford.

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We live in an economy of abundance. Yet, even in this economy of abundance, I have discovered in my years that most of us are drowned by debt.

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We are unable to pay what we owe. Forgive us our debts. This is based on our wrongdoing. Debt is a symbol here of what we owe

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in seeking to pay for the sins that we have committed, as was the case in the practice of ancient religion. So forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. In other words, our forgiveness is related

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to how our forgiveness with God is related to how we forgive one another. - Amen, amen. - This man who had a grudge with a next door neighbor

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next door neighbor and he became critically ill and he sent for this neighbor and he said, "You know, John, this doesn't matter "that we had between us all these years?"

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He said, "Yes." He said, "Now, if I die, it's forgiven, "but if I live, it's just like it was." And that's so much the case with many of us.

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Our forgiveness is so conditional. But God wants us to pray, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

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Forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness, forgive. Now, trespassing is something I became familiar with. So let's just spend a moment considering, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those

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who trespass against us. You'd see along the line of your travel many times, a sign out there in the field. "Do not trespass."

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And there were some people who owned certain land who had certain ways of enforcing that. That I shall not deal with here. But one was not to pass through that land without getting permission, or get on that land without getting permission.

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"Do not trespass." So the greatest debt is the debt we owe the Lord and that we cannot fully repay. No matter how I preach, no matter how I sing, no matter how regular we may attend prayer meetings and how often we may read the Bible, we can never fully repay the debt we owe to God. We just make installments as I said and life is like that.

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It is a loan we can never fully repay. And there are those who say that to forgive is to forget. I don't want to advance that idea that, in other words, you get no credit.

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If you forgot about it, you can't remember it. There's no special credit for that. But to be able to remember that someone did you injuries, did harm to you,

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to be able to remember and still forgive. In other words, you may have the wound, but the wound is no longer painful because it has healed. And to have that kind of experience is not only helpful,

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but it enriches one's life. So to forgive is not to forget, Loans on life, an interest that causes the interest to mount. Whenever you have a loan and you don't pay it on time,

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the interest continues to grow. So loans on life without interest that cause the interest to mount. And so we must continually pray because it's building up all the time.

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We must continually pray. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. A mother may forget the shame of a wayward son. She remembers and forgives.

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I did not say that she forgives and forgets, but she remembers and forgives. This is what Jesus, Jesus, the Son of God,

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teaches his disciples to pray. The sins are not forgotten, but they are remembered and they are forgiven. Burn heals, the pain goes, but the scar remains.

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And the soul that would learn this must practice it. It must be given a place in our prayer life. Forgive us our debts and as we forgive others "Others, so our debts are forgiven."

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So often we have a desire to get even. And we got this desire when we were quite young. I can remember we'd hit one another and we said, "No, don't you take the last lick.

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"Don't ever take the last lick." We wanna get even. But this is not an experience in which we had to get even with Stephen.

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It's an experience in which we are to get right with God. And to get right with God is to somehow experience and be able to share the forgiveness of God. And that's so hard for many of us to do.

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We can carry our graduates so long and we can nurse them so well. - Say that. but to forgive, to say, "Lord, forgive.

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"Forgive me as I forgive others." That's the heart of the Christian faith because God so loved the world that he forgave us. He sent his son that he might deliver us

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from the jaws of death. And we are always burdened down when we have failed to forgive. When you go around carrying a grudge against anybody, that's a burden, an unnecessary burden. And Jesus admonishes every one of us to forgive debts as we forgive debts.

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Forgive our debts as we forgive the debts that we have of others. Forgive us of our wrongdoing. Everybody here needs to pray that prayer.

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Because we all find ourselves falling short. Forgive us of our wrongdoing. God so loved the world that he sent his son to reconcile us with him.

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to reconcile earth and heaven. And one of the problems of forgiveness is estrangement. Estrangement, we feel strange. I see this brother over here

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and he has on a better suit than I have on. And I have a funny feeling around him because I say he thinks he's better because he has on a better suit.

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It's strange to me, such foolish things many times, but it's strange to me. - Yes, yes sir, yes sir. - And I used to hear it said in the family,

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said, "Well, I don't like so and so." Well, why don't you like? I don't know, I just don't like it. I just have a funny feeling when I'm with it.

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God is going to the very root of our being so that we may have that love, that we may have that understanding, that we may have that relationship with one another.

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Oh, how wonderful it would be if every one of us in all of our communities would be in right relationship with each other. Forgive us our debts as we forgive others.

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That makes us free. We're not free if we're not people who forgive. We're not really free. We have a burden that carries us down.

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When we, it's forgiveness that frees us to live our lives, to be ourselves, to walk as Jesus walked, to forgive. Can you imagine Judas and this group following him around for three years and Jesus knew his intentions all the time,

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and yet he's treating him with such dignity and grace. And he said, "Yes, that's the kind of life "he wants you to live." That's the kind of relationship we are to have

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with the heavenly father. So God understands for all of us to be free is to live the life of Jesus. He sends his son Jesus to make it possible for us

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to become reconciled unto him. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debt. Well, during those last days of Jesus, he was at the home of Simon the leper.

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And I came into this home, this woman who had an alabaster jar of perfume, and she poured it out upon his head. There were those who were jealous.

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And Jesus raised the question about if a woman had committed great sins, how much should she be forgiven? Well, great, great sins would be forgiven. This is the way he treats us.

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Such a wonderful thing. Out there on the cross, when you see all of the pain, the agony that he experienced. And in the midst of it all, hear him cry,

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"Father, Father, forgive them, "for they know not what they do." - Amen. - That's the prayer, that's the prayer we need to pray,

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not once a day, we need to pray it just every day. Moment every hour, we ought to seek to relate ourselves to the Heavenly Father and the fellowship of forgiveness. What a friend we have in Jesus,

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because he forgives us. Oh, we've all done things. Look back across your life. There's some people you mistreated,

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some words you shouldn't have said. You can't go back and find those people anymore, but you can find God. - Amen.

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- God can find you. And that's a good thing. That's why he wants us to be free. Not to be burdened with guilt, but to be free. And he says to us, "You can come to me. You can go to the heavenly Father and be free." So as the choir leads us in singing

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This song That is the hymn of invitation we invite you to come If I have wounded any soul today dear Lord forgive this is personal that this is something you, in your heart of hearts,

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you talk to God about. Because when you talk with God, you talk with someone who understands. He understands us better than we understand ourselves.

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So as we extend the invitation to Christian discipleship, we invite you to come, unite with the people of God here at Ebenezer. Come.

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[MUSIC] ♪ Any soul today ♪ ♪ If I ever ♪ ♪ A stray ♪

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♪ If I ever ♪ ♪ In my own willful way ♪ ♪ Dear old ♪ ♪ Home, dear ♪

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♪ Near by the water lily ♪ ♪ Birds were playing ♪ ♪ Near by ♪ ♪ The tender sun from warm ♪

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♪ Love made ♪ ♪ Is the time for him some other ♪ ♪ To prove the most great ♪ ♪ Dear Lord, Lord, we ♪

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♪ Dear God, have in the first ♪ ♪ The hour of hope ♪ ♪ And I have longed for shelter in the fold ♪ ♪ And God has given me some food to hold ♪

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♪ Dear Lord, for the year ♪ ♪ Oh dear, the sins I have confessed to thee ♪ ♪ Oh dear, the secrets, gentile, you have seen ♪ ♪ Oh God, we love thee and thy keeper be ♪

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♪ Dear Lord, Amen ♪ - Forgive us, O Lord. And grant... [BLANK_AUDIO]