What did you do wrong today? How did you blow it? What did you mess up? Or are you saying you had a perfect day? Every thought you thought, every word you spoke, every act you did, was pure and holy and righteous. You did the things you were supposed to do, and you didn’t do the things you weren’t supposed to do.
No, I didn’t think so. It would be great if we had such a day. In fact, we want this so bad, that we kind of fool ourselves. Let’s see. We went to church this morning. We prayed before AND after our meals. We didn’t mow our lawn today. We didn’t lie, at least not that we can remember. We didn’t covet, at least we wouldn’t call it that. We had a good day.
So, when we hear God say, "I forgive you for today," we’re a little confused. Forgive? Forgive for what? What did we do? Okay, we know that we sinned, somehow. But how? What exactly did we do? God’s declaration of forgiveness is a little unnerving. We feel comfortable, we feel safe when we fool ourselves into our false perfection.
But there’s another way to find this comfort, rather than deluding ourselves into thinking that we’re better than we really are. Remember? What’s our only comfort, in life and in death? That we had a really good day and we’re really good people? No. That we belong, body and soul, with all of our faults and failures, to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
We’re almost to the end of the Lord’s Prayer. Remember, prayer is the first step we take in expressing our gratitude to the Lord for saving us, for forgiving us. And this is our request this evening, to forgive us. Question 126:
What does the fifth request mean? A. "Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors" means, Because of Christ's blood, do not hold against us, poor sinners that we are, any of the sins we do or the evil that constantly clings to us.
Poor sinners that we are. That doesn’t sound very good, does it? That doesn’t sound like we did pretty good today. That sounds like we are wretched, evil. This is not something we like to think of, but once again, remember…how do we know this comfort, in life and in death? Three things we need to know…how deep our sin is, the way out of that sin, and how to show gratitude.
So this need for forgiveness is nothing new. We’ve known about this. We might not like to remember it, but the need to be forgiven never, never goes away. No matter how much we try, now matter how hard we work at it, we are constantly in need of forgiveness.
When we pray, we’re asking, pleading for God to not hold against us any of the sins we do. That’s a lot to ask, considering how many sins we do. But we’re asking. We’re hoping that God, in His mercy, will decided to forgive. We know full well He doesn’t have to. We know that we have no right to ask. But, we ask.
And thankfully, that forgiveness is there. Micah 7 is a chapter of hope. For most of the book of Micah, there has been accusation and warning and judgment. The leaders of Israel have led the people away from God. The people have sinned. They are lost.
But the Shepherd isn’t going to let things stay this way. Verse 14:
Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance, which lives by itself in a forest, in fertile pasturelands.
The Shepherd, the Lord is going out looking for the sheep. The Shepherd, the Lord is going out searching for the sinners. He is going out to bring them in, but something has to happen first before He can do that. Something has to happen before the Lord can bring back the sinners.
He has to forgive them first. He has to forgive us first. We rejected Him. We defied Him. We ignored Him. We wanted nothing to do with Him. When He spoke, we turned our backs on Him. When He came looking for us, at least at first, we walked in the other direction. At that point, God had a choice. He could say, "Fine. You want nothing to do with Me. I want nothing to do with you. You’re on your own." He could have said that.
But He didn’t. He took the second option. He forgave. Verse 15:
"As in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show them my wonders."
Remember what God did to bring His people out of slavery? He turned the Nile River to blood. He rained frogs and fire and hail down on the people. He made lice crawl on their skin. That was nothing compared to what He did here. He forgave us. Can you let that sink in for just a moment. He forgave us.
And you know how He did that. He sent His Son, He sent Himself to die on the cross so that we could be forgiven. Sort of makes hail and frogs and lice pale in comparison, doesn’t it? He died so that we could come back. He died so that we could be forgiven.
No wonder Micah scratches his head and writes verse 18:
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance?
Who is a God like You? That’s what Micah’s name means, by the way. Who is like You to forgive? Who is like You to come looking for us? Who is like You to die for me? Certainly not Allah. He’ll throw you in hell for having just one more bad mark than good mark on your record. Not Buddha. He’ll make you repeat life over and over and over again until you get it right. Not science or humanism. The weak are exterminated, only the strong survive.
That’s not our God. Who is a God like You? Verse 18:
You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.
Doesn’t that put a smile on your face? He delights to show mercy. He doesn’t do it grudgingly, we don’t have to coax it out of Him. He delights in showing His mercy, His forgiveness. Verse 19:
You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.
He grinds out sins into the dirt so that they’re gone. He hurls the guilt mile out to sea, and they sink to the bottom and, as I heard a preacher say once, He puts up a "No fishing" sign. They’re gone.
That’s the God that we pray to. That’s the God we ask, "Forgive us our debts." Who is a God like our God?
Except, that’s not the whole prayer request, is it? How does it go? "Forgive us our debts…as we forgive our debtors. Forgive our sins like we forgive those who have sinned against us." Wouldn’t this be a great prayer if it was just about our own forgiveness? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if this was just between us and God, and not between us, and us. But that’s not what this prayer is about. Lord, forgive us as much as we forgive each other. Forgive us in the same way, with the same attitude that we forgive the people who hurt us. Like answer 126 puts it:
Forgive us just as we are fully determined, as evidence of your grace in us, to forgive our neighbors.
The question is, are we fully determined to forgive? Do we want to forgive? Do we want to want to forgive? Our prayer is that God want to forgive us like we want to forgive others.
Let’s make sure we understand what we’re talking about here. Forgiving is not saying, "Hey, everything’s fine, no problem, what you did, that’s okay." That’s not forgiving. That’s not how God forgives us. He’s not saying, "Hey, that lust, that pride, that greed, that envy, no problem, it’s okay." No, our sin is serious. It hurts Him. He grieves.
And His forgiveness says, "I will not hold this against you. I will not punish you. I will love you, in spite of this. I will talk to you, in spite of what you’ve done. I will look at you, in spite of how you’ve treated me."
And now we’re saying that His forgiveness should look like our forgiveness, His attitude should be the same as our attitude. Remember how great His forgiveness is for us? That’s the standard for us. Remember how God doesn’t stay angry forever but delights to show mercy? Hhm. How are we doing with this? Do not stay angry forever. Are we fully determined not to stay angry forever? Do we delight to show mercy? Are we eager to show mercy?
Remember God, coming looking for us, even when we didn’t want forgiveness? Is this how we’re thinking about the people in our lives, where someone has done us wrong? Are we looking for ways to forgive them, or are we looking for ways to avoid them? Are we eager to show mercy, or do we delight in rubbing it in a little, handing out more hurt in payment for the hurt done for us? Are we forgiving as we have been forgiven.
Remember God treading our sins underfoot and hurling our iniquities into the depths of the sea? Is this what we do with the sins done against us? Again, forgiveness is not pretending there was no hurt, no wrong. Forgiveness is not just brushing the pain under the rug. Forgiveness is us intentionally pushing the sins past us, acknowledging the wrong, recognizing the pain, and choosing to move on.
Sometimes, most of the time, this has to happen dozens of times, hundreds of times, even for just the one offense. The memories keep coming back, the pain resurfaces, and there we are again, with a choice. To grab on to the hurt again, think the thoughts of revenge, bitterness. Or to let go. To tread the sins underfoot, like God has done with us. To throw the pain down on the ground and grind it into the soil with our heels. To hurl the offense far out to sea and this time we put up a sign that says "No fishing." We’re not going back to the pain again. We’ve moved past it. We’ve forgiven.
You’ve heard me say this before, but forgiving one another of the sins we’ve done to each other, that’s the hardest thing God requires of us. But then again, it’s the hardest thing God does, too, to forgive us. It took the death of Himself to allow Him to forgive. It takes the death of ourselves to forgive the person that has harmed us. It takes the death of feelings, the death of hopes of revenge, the death of our persons. Just like Jesus.
But remember what happened when Jesus died. He didn’t stay dead. When Jesus died to forgive us, He rose again to a life of power and joy, an eternal life. The same goes for us. When we forgive our debtors the way God forgives our debts, we die, and then we come back to life, that same life of power, of joy, that eternal life.
We ask God to forgive us as we forgive others. And you know what God says? He says, "No. I won’t. I’ll forgive you better. I forgive you completely, even when you haven’t completely forgiven. But learn from Me. Learn how I have forgiven you so that you know how to forgive.
Your sins have been tread under God’s foot. Do the same. Your iniquities have been hurled into the depths of the sea. Take the hurts, take the words, take the sins that have been done against you, and hurl those sins out there, right next to your sins. Forgive, as the Lord has forgiven you.