One day when I was praying forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors it dawned on me that I was praying in the first-person plural. I was not merely asking God to forgive me, but you as well—us. I think there must be a kind of communion among all of us who know God, and when I ask him to forgive us then it would be very foolish of me not to forgive at the same time. How can I pray to God and say, Lord, forgive Bob and I of our sins, but I want
The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.
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One day when I was praying, it dawned on me that when I prayed, forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors. it dawned on me that I was praying in the first person plural. I was not asking God merely to forgive me. I was asking Him to forgive you as well, us. Now, I think there must be a kind of communion among all of us who know God, and when I ask Him to forgive us… Well, then it would be very foolish of me not to forgive at the same time. How can I pray to God, say, Lord, forgive Bob and I of our sins, but I want you to understand I’m not going to forgive Bob. I’m going to hold a grudge against Bob, but I expect you to forgive him? Well, it doesn’t really work that way. There is this short parable of Jesus, I think, that is very revealing in this line, and I think it’s worth inserting at this point in the Sermon on the Mount. Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Seven times? Would that be what you would expect of us? Jesus looked at him and said, no, not until seven times, but until 70 times seven. I expected Peter went a little pale about that time. But really, Jesus isn’t suggesting that you should forgive 490 times. By saying 70 times seven, he means you just keep on forgiving forever. And then he explains by saying, the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king. He wanted to take account of his servants. And so when he had begun to reckon, all the stuff had been added up. They brought one of the guys into him that owed him 10,000 talents. A talent is a lot of money. But the man didn’t have anything to pay, and his lord commanded him to be sold and his wife and his children and all that he had in payment to be made. That’s the way it was done back then. You know, you didn’t merely mortgage the home. You mortgaged yourself, your wife, and your kids. You know, they didn’t destroy them or kill them or anything like that. They just were put to work somewhere to work off the debt. And they didn’t have to work at it longer than six years. If the debt wasn’t paid off in six years, they just wrote it off in the seventh year. Everybody was let go free. So it isn’t quite as bad as it sounds, but it’s not anything I think any of us would want to get involved in. So they were going to sell everybody off and make payment. Now the servant fell down and did obeisance to the king and said, Lord, have patience with me. I will pay you every dime. And the king looked at the guy and was just moved with compassion, and he just really honestly felt sorry for him. And he then just wrote off the debt. He didn’t say, well, I’ll tell you what, let’s work out a payment schedule, and maybe in 5,000 years you’ll have paid off this amount of money, because that’s probably what it would have taken for the guy to pay it off. He was being realistic. He just forgave the debt. He just wrote the whole thing off and says, get out of here. Now, the servant went out, and after he’d gone out, he found one of his fellow servants that owed him 100 pence. So you’re looking at a ratio here of, what shall we say, 10,000 to less than one as to the size of the debts. Like the one man had been forgiven a million dollars, and he’s got another guy that owes him $40, and he’s going to exact that $40. He took this guy, laid hands on him, grabbed him, took him by the throat and said, “‘Pay me what you owe.’ And his fellow servant fell down at his feet.” and pleaded with him, saying, Have patience with me, I’ll pay you all. And what’s funny about this is that hundred pence was well within the possibility of being paid off on a payment schedule. And the guy just is asking for patience. What’s also ironic is he uses precisely the same words that this jerk used when he pleaded with the king to let his debt go. So what happens? Well, he said, no way that I’m going to let you off. And he went and had him cast into the debtor’s prison until the debt should be paid. Now, when the other servants around the palace saw what was done, they really felt bad and they went back and told the king what had been done. Then the king called this guy back in again and said, you louse. You wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt for no other reason than that you asked me. Shouldn’t you have had compassion on your fellow servant just like I had pity on you? And his Lord was angry, and it’s easy to understand. I mean, what kind of a mind goes in and gets a million dollars written off and then goes back and tries to exact a hundred bucks out of a friend of his and won’t give him a break, won’t let him off the hook at all? Well, his Lord was angry, delivered him to the tormentors until he should pay all that was due to him. Now comes the point of the parable as Jesus offers it. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do unto you if you from your hearts forgive not every one of you his brother his trespasses. Now, the implications of this are a little bit scary because what Jesus is saying here is, that having been forgiven, if you fall into an unforgiving attitude or unforgiving spirit, you could lose your own forgiveness. Now, I know that runs counter to what you may believe about God. Some people believe that once saved, always saved. Once you’ve been saved, there’s no way you could ever possibly lose your salvation. And yet here’s a situation where one who’s been forgiven, justified, made right with God, as it were, and then who falls himself into an unforgiving spirit and is unwilling to let his brother go. And God says, if you do that, I’m going to come back. I’m going to exact everything out of your hide. I’ll let you think about that for a moment, and I’ll be right back.
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Would God lead you into trouble? Well, it certainly doesn’t seem like that would be the case. And yet here in the Lord’s Prayer, in Matthew 5, verse 13, Jesus suggests that one of the things we should pray is… And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. What he is saying is don’t lead us into trouble, but deliver us from adversity. Would God lead us into trouble? Well, I hearken back to the Old Testament and a man named Job who was a perfect, upright, righteous man, lived a good life, hated evil. And I know that’s true because God himself testified that Job was a man like that. And there came a day when Satan, for whatever reason, came before God’s throne. And God said to Satan, Have you seen my servant Job? Have you seen what a good, righteous, upright man he is and hates evil? And Satan responded saying, Well, big deal. I mean, he doesn’t serve you for nothing. You put a hedge around him. You bless him. You pour out wealth and riches. To me, like it pays Job to serve you. Why wouldn’t he? Well, God considered the challenge and said, Okay, I’ll put him in your hand, but don’t put your, I mean, you can have everything that he has, you can touch all that, but you can’t touch his body. Now, the story of Job, I won’t try to tell you the whole story today, but it involved an incredible amount of personal loss, family loss, loss of life, loss of health, until finally the poor man with his children dead and all of his wealth gone and his body covered with boils to where he couldn’t find any part of the body to put down without hurting, sat in a pile of ashes and scraped his boils with a piece of broken pottery. It got that bad. And God allowed it to happen at every step of the way because of the challenge that the devil made about Job. It’s almost as though the Lord and the devil had this little chat and this little bet between them about whether Job would be faithful through all this or whether Job would not. And so God allowed all that stuff to come upon him to prove a point or perhaps as a side issue to develop a little more character in Job. Now, when you look at this, you have to realize then that when we come before God, that there is a lot of trouble out here in the world, and it’s legitimate to go to God and say, Lord, don’t lead me into temptation, into trial, and into trouble, and deliver me from adversity. Evil is probably not the best word for that right there. Now, one of the most significant things about this to me is that we get all the way down to this place in this prayer, you know, this to our daily bread and forgiving us of our sins. But finally, we are allowed to ask God to get us out of any trouble we are in. If you think about it, most of the time, you know, when you go to God in prayer, if you’re in a lot of trouble and your life isn’t working real good, first thing you do is say, Lord, God, Father in heaven, get me out of this mess. But the way Jesus said is that you don’t approach God that way. First of all, you acknowledge him. You acknowledge his greatness. You develop the relationship with God. And then you deal with the problems of the basic necessities of life, which are really the important things. And you deal with the forgiveness of sin, which is still more important. And only then can you say, well, Lord, I’m in a whole lot of trouble here. Would you help me get out of it? Then we come to the end of the Lord’s Prayer, and we end it like we began it. honoring God. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. So the prayer comes full circle. We start out with honoring God. We acknowledge what he is doing, that he has a will, that he is working out here on this planet below. We deal with our daily necessities. We ask for forgiveness for sins, not only for ourselves, but for others as well. We then acknowledge the need for God to get us out and keep us out of trouble and deliver us out of the trouble that we’ve gotten ourselves into, and then we close it out once again by saying, how great is God, how great is His kingdom, His power and His glory are above all. You know, in this short passage in Matthew 5, we learn nearly everything we will ever need to know about prayer. And then he kind of concludes it with this explanatory note, which I think is really very important. If you forgive men your trespasses, verse 14, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And when you think about it, why should we expect it to be otherwise? How can you come to God in an unforgiving spirit and ask God to forgive you? He goes on with this Sermon on the Mount dealing with some other attitudes of heart and mind. He says, When you fast, don’t be like the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces so that men will look at them and know they’re fasting. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. About all they’re going to get out of this is the fact that people are going to look at them and say, Oh, look there, there’s a righteous fasting man. But you, when you fast, anoint your head, Wash your face so that you do not look like you are fasting, so that your fasting is done before your Father in secret, and your Father which sees in secret will reward you openly. Now, we’ve talked before about this, and once again we’ve come back to the question of the inner man. What’s going on inside? Not just what’s going on outside, not what do we look like, how do we perform, but what’s going on inside? The idea behind fasting is to humble oneself before God, to mourn for our sins, and thereby the inner man might be made better. King Solomon made an interesting statement back in Ecclesiastes 7. He said, It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. What does that mean? He said, Really, it’s better to go down to the funeral home and stand quietly by the casket of a friend who has passed away than to go down to the local comedy club. Because your friend there lying in that casket, that’s the end of all men. And you standing there looking before him need to lay it to heart. Sorrow, he says, is better than laughter. For by the sadness of the countenance, the heart, the inside man gets made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning. But the heart of fools is in the house of laughter and of mirth. So the idea, again, behind fasting is the inner man who humbles himself before God, mourns for what he has done, mourns for his sins and his weaknesses, and asks God to make him better and to heal up the inward man. So you see easily that if you fast to be seen by other people, the whole process is corrupted. It doesn’t mean a thing. Then Jesus goes on to really a very important concept. He said in verse 19, Lay not up for yourself treasures upon earth where moth and rust do corrupt and where thieves can break in and steal it. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust do corrupt and where thieves can’t get to it. For where your treasure is, that’s where your heart’s going to be. Now, as a preacher about to take up an offering, I might be tempted to compare giving to the church to laying up treasure in heaven. You know, I might stand up here and say, now don’t lay up for yourselves treasure upon earth. Lay up treasure in heaven. Here’s the offering basket coming around. Put the money in the offering basket. You’ll be laying up treasure in heaven. But the church is not heaven. nor can you get any money up there to God in heaven. God doesn’t need your money anyway, and if you did need it, you couldn’t get it to him. It’s spirit and your physical. This passage of Scripture is not an admonition to give money. It’s an admonition to stop being preoccupied with money. There’s a difference. And rather to give attention to the things that are of real and permanent value and that cannot be touched. You know, when a man builds righteous character, He’s laying up for himself permanent treasures because that character inside of us can’t be touched, can’t be taken away. In fact, in the process of trying to take it away from a man, you only tend to strengthen it. So thieves can’t get it. Moth and rust can’t get at it. Only you, as a sinner, can give it away if you want to. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven has to do with your conduct, your righteous deeds, the care of the poor, giving to others, sharing your time, sharing your love, and laying up treasure in heaven that nobody can ever touch. Forget money. You can’t put it anywhere where it can’t be touched. Then Jesus went on to say in verse 22, The light of the body is the eye. If therefore the eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light. But if your eye is evil, then the whole body shall be full of darkness. You know, this figure of speech falls strangely on the modern ear. But the concept is not hard. The single eye is comparable to being single-minded. The evil eye to being double-minded. So the light of the body is the eye. If your eye be single, if your purpose is clean and clear and not complicated, you’ll have light in your body. But if your eye is evil, that is, if it’s complex, if it’s double, then the whole body is going to be full of darkness. Therefore, if the light is in you, it’s darkness. How great is that darkness? The idea that Jesus is saying is that of being single-minded. And listen to how he continues it in verse 24. Now this harkens all the way back up to verse 19. where he says, don’t lay up treasures on earth. Lay up treasures in heaven. Be single-minded. Don’t serve two masters. You will hold one and despise the other. You can’t serve God and mammon. Mammon is just another word for worldly possessions, worldly wealth, worldly things. You can’t serve both of them. If laying up treasures on earth is your goal, you cannot serve God effectively. You will be double-minded. and you’ll head off in three or four directions at the same time. Therefore, said Jesus, I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink. Don’t worry about your body, what you’re going to put on your clothes. The life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. Now, it doesn’t make any sense to say that you shouldn’t plan tomorrow’s meals. That’s not what Jesus is on about. What he is saying is that you should not take anxious thought about what you’re going to eat. Don’t sit around worrying about these things. Why not? Well, he continues to say, Behold the fowls of the air. They don’t sow, they don’t reap, they don’t gather into barns. But your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you better than birds? Or which of you, by worrying about the matter, can add one cubit to his stature? You’re a short person. I’ll tell you what. Go sit in a chair over there and concentrate. Close your eyes and furrow your brow and think real hard about being six feet tall and see if it works. Of course, it doesn’t work. Well, why worry about it then? And why take thought or worry about your raiment or your clothes? Look at the lilies of the field. They grow. They don’t worry. They don’t spin. But I say unto you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. So if God so clothed the grass of the field, which is here today and gone tomorrow, is he not going to much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So don’t worry, saying, What are we going to eat? Or, What are we going to drink? Or, What are we going to wear? Look, after all these things, the Gentiles, the nations, just pursue them, no end. But your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. Okay, so what should I go after? Seek you first the kingdom, the reign, the rule of God, and His righteousness, and the rest of this stuff will fall behind. So don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself.
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Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only and request the program titled Matthew 13. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.
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Jesus does not seem inclined at all in the Sermon on the Mount to let us off the hook. Because as he begins Matthew 7, he says, Judge not that you be not judged. For with whatever judgment you judge, you shall be judged. And whatever measure you measure is going to be measured to you back that way again. Now, every one of us must from time to time judge the right or wrong of an action or even of a person. So Jesus can’t possibly be telling us that, well, you can look at a guy who’s an absolute thief, liar, whatever you may call him, and you see the events and you’re not allowed to sit there and say, well, I think he’s a liar because he lied. No, no, that’s not what this is about. There is no point in telling yourself that you don’t believe a man is a fool if he is one. There are bad, even dangerous people in the world, and for your own safety, you had better be a good judge of bad character. Well, what does Jesus mean then when he tells us not to judge? Well, the sense in which Jesus uses the word has to do not merely with discrimination, but with condemnation. But the most important thing about this is the clarification he makes in verse 2. When he says, now don’t judge that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. And with what measure you meet, it shall be measured to you again. Now it’s one thing to notice that a man is not measuring up to God’s standards. The man’s sinning. He’s a liar. It’s another thing to judge him by your own standards. And Jesus says, once you set a standard for judgment, You’re going to be judged by the same standard. Well, you can get up in a political contest and condemn your opponent for his fundraising practices. Okay, fine. That means that you’re going to be judged by precisely the same standards on your fundraising practices as he has been judged on his. Now James, in his second chapter, verse 12, says this, So speak you and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty. For he shall have judgment without mercy who has shown no mercy. Okay, I get the picture. So if I want to have mercy shown to me, then I’ve got to show mercy to other people, which means I can’t judge them or condemn them lest I myself not find mercy when I go looking for it. The idea seems to be, frankly, that Jesus calls upon us to exercise mercy rather than judgment. Then he chooses this awkward for us analogy. It probably read quite well in his day and to the people who heard it. He says, why do you behold a speck in your brother’s eye and you don’t consider the beam, he means log or big piece of wood, that is in your own eye? It’s hyperbole. It’s exaggeration for effect. And how is it you’re going to say to your brother, let me get that mote out of your eye, and at the same time you’ve got a stick in your eye that keeps you from even being able to see? You hypocrite, Jesus said. First cast the beam out of your own eye, and then you’ll be able to see clearly to cast the mote out of your brother’s eye. It’s more the same. It’s saying, look, don’t try to straighten out other people until you’ve straightened out yourself. When you take a hand to try to correct your brother, you might want to look at the crookedness in your own life first. Then Jesus says, don’t give what’s holy to the dogs. And don’t cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet and turn again and hurt you. Now, what does that have to do with anything? Well, he’s still on the same theme. He’s saying, look, you’re going to go up to your friend, your brother, and you’re going to try to straighten him out. You know, he’s not living his life right. He’s got a problem. Maybe he drinks too much, whatever it may be. At best, you’re going to wind up turning your friend against you. You may even make an enemy out of him. And that’s what Jesus means when he says, don’t fool with it. They’re going to turn around and trample you under feet. Don’t try to correct all the error around you. You will only get yourself hurt. Solomon made this point when he said in Ecclesiastes 1.12, I, the preacher, was king over Israel and Jerusalem, and I gave my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom everything that’s done under heaven. This is a sore travail God’s given to us to be exercised with. And he said, I have seen all the works that are done under the sun, and the whole thing is emptiness and a striving after wind, and I’ll tell you why. He said, that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting or lacking can’t be numbered. In other words, there are just too many problems out there for you, pilgrim, to sort them all out. So don’t get the idea in your mind that you’re going to go out there and straighten out everybody in your environment, correct this person, explain things to that person, and get them all to put their life back together again. It’s enough for you to love them and to forgive them and to have mercy for them and not judge them. Because when you judge them and you start trying to correct them and straighten them out, you’re going to be in the position of a person who’s casting pearls before swine and getting run over in the process. In verse 7, Jesus says, Ask, and it shall be given you. Seek, and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone that asks receives, and he that seeks finds, and to him that knocks it shall be opened. Now, this is a generality, of course. But the truth is, if you don’t go looking for it, you’re sure not going to find it. He said, What man is there of you? If his son asks bread, is he going to give him a rock? Well, I certainly wouldn’t. Or if his son asks for fish, are you going to give him a snake? Now, if you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father in heaven give good things to them that ask him? He said, all I’m doing is asking you to look to God and acknowledge that he is at least as good as you are. And if you’re going to give bread to your child, not stone, then don’t you think that God is going to do good to you as well? So all things whatsoever you would that men would do to you, Do you even so to them? For this is the law and the prophets. In other words, this sums up so much of what is written even in the Old Testament about the law, the prophets, and what God is going to do to man. Just figure out how you want things to happen to you, and you do that to them. You know, I would think something that simple would be fairly easy to make work in your life. But I don’t know about you. I have an awful hard time making it work. I think the reason is because we just don’t think. If we thought and we said, is this what I’d want to happen to me? We would never do it. Maybe it’s time for us to think.
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Until next time, think about it and remember, you were born to win. The Born to Win radio program with Ronald L. Dart is sponsored by Christian Educational Ministries and made possible by donations from listeners like you. If you can help, please send your donation to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. You may call us at 1
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