Apostles' Creed Sermon - 13
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Apostles’ Creed – The forgiveness of sins
Matthew 18:21-35
1. Introduction – We live in a society that is quick to blame and quick to shame. For the most part, our society is offended by everything and forgiving about nothing.
a. When someone does wrong, our society isn’t satisfied until that person’s whole life is ruined. It’s safe to say that we live in a very unforgiving world. Everything is acceptable and nothing is forgivable.
i. But the Christian faith and the Apostles’ Creed states an alternative lifestyle. Remember, these are statements that we stake our faith on.
1. These are statements that some Christians have staked, and lost, their lives over.
a. So, counter to our world that is offended by everything about everything and forgiving about nothing, we have this line in the Creed that says, I believe in the forgiveness of sins.”
b. I found an awesome video that sarcastically speaks about our societies propensity to get offended. Watch this.
i. Now seriously, what runs more against the grain of our culture…what stands in stark contrast to the petty and offended nature of our culture then forgiveness?
1. In all seriousness, we are looking at a very important topic. In a few minutes, you’ll see that it is rich and deep in meaning.
a. Again, I want you to recognize that this is one sermon on a very deep topic. This one line, this one concept could be a whole sermon series in and of itself.
i. There are going to be aspects of forgiveness that we won’t touch on this morning. I’m not ignorant of them, those aspects of forgiveness simply got left on the editing room floor because it was impossible for me to say everything about forgiveness in one sermon.
c. But this line, as you’ll see throughout this sermon, really pacts a punch, and maybe more than any other line in the Apostles’ Creed, gets to the heart of what the Christian life and the Christian faith is all about.
i. I have 3 simple questions to ask answer this morning – questions that are penetrating, that will strike deep into your heart, and will really get you thinking about forgiveness.
2. Who Needs forgiveness? – The first question I want to ask this morning is this… Who needs forgiveness?
a. Well, this word forgiveness in the Creed actually presupposes guilt.
i. Forgiveness is meaningless if there is nothing to forgive. So, in order to understand forgiveness, we must first understand guilt; we must first understand the enormity of our debt towards God.
1. The Bible calls this debt sin.
b. And what is sin? Well the Greek word that the NT uses is the word hamartia. And in the ancient world, this word was an archery term. It meant ‘to miss the mark.’ When an archer took aim at a target, if they missed, they would hear a spotter yell, “hamartia.”
i. I’m sure at some point in your life you’ve aimed at something – a target, a net, lined up a golf shot.
1. You’ve all took aim at something – throwing something, playing catch, shooting a basketball – you’ve all aimed at something.
a. What happens? Sometimes, by some miracle, you hit the target. But more often than not, you miss it. You hamartia – you miss the mark.
c. And this is what the Bible tells us happen when we go against the good things God has for us. The Bible tells us that there is a moral standard that we are all measured against – God’s standard is perfection.
i. And guess what…you’ve missed the marked. We’ve all fallen short of the glorious standard of God. On a daily basis, we hamartia, we miss, we sin.
1. We sin by things we’ve said, done or thought. Sin can be premeditated or it can be spontaneous. These are called sins of commission.
a. But understand that we also sin by failing to say, think or do things that we should have done.
i. When we don’t help the need, when we don’t speak God’s love into someone’s life, we are still sinning. Those are called sins of omission.
d. But in our day, and even in some churches, the topic and concept of sin feels outdated. We come up with softer language for sin to make is sound less abrasive.
i. Adultery is now called ‘an affair’ – as if changing the word makes it more justifiable.
1. What is consumerism but greed, lust, coveting, pride and gluttony all wrapped in to one package?
a. And I’m not trying to make light of this. We need to take these things seriously. Sin can enslave us. It can rob us of our joy.
i. It can build barriers in our relationship with God and our relationship with other people.
e. And the more we brush off sin, the more we try to tame it down or attempt to justify it – the easier it is for us to give in to its evil desires.
i. But thank God, he offers forgiveness. Thank God, he offers us an alternative to self-destructive sin.
1. Thank God, he offers us Jesus, he attained that moral perfection, died so that we can be forgiven of our sins. Which brings me to my next question.
3. Will God forgive me? – Question 1 asks, who needs forgiveness? And the Bible’s answer is simply, “Yes.”
a. Paul sums it up like this – Romans 3:23, all of sinned.”
i. But that brings up the next question, “Will God forgive my sins?”
b. There are some, and maybe you’re even here this morning, who don’t think they need God’s forgiveness. You’re a good person, you do good things, what more needs to happen?
i. Or, on the other side of that, there are those in our world, and again, maybe you’re even here this morning, who think they’ve gone too far and are uncertain or unsure that God can even forgive them.
c. For those of you who don’t think you need God’s forgiveness, let me say this – what makes you think you’re the exception to the ‘all’ of Romans 3:23?
i. There is a standard set by God – perfection – for our lives, and you’ve missed it, I’ve missed, everyone in this room has missed that mark.
1. Yes, you stand in need of God’s forgiveness.
d. And for those of you this morning who struggle the opposite way, let me say this.
i. Yes, we should feel the weight and guilt of our sin. We are programmed as humans to feel remorse when we do something.
1. Guilt should lead us to repentance, to reconciliation, and to avoiding that behaviour in the future.
a. But we need not struggle with excessive guilt. And if we struggle with excessive guilt, it is often because our view of God is misaligned.
e. If we struggle with excessive guilt, maybe it’s because we feel God’s displeasure, where there isn’t any displeasure.
i. Maybe you feel guilty when you are enjoying life, as if God doesn’t want you to have joy.
1. Bu this view of God is misaligned. Because while God is a just judge, while he does hate sin and punishes sin – God is also God who is rich in steadfast love and mercy.
a. He doesn’t just have enough love and mercy to get by – he is abounding in it.
i. And the Bible states that if we confess sin to him…he will forgive it.
f. Look at these references. What’s the repeated word here? Forgive.
i. These are all the words of Jesus – and Jesus presents to us a God who is more willing to forgive than we are to ask for forgiveness.
1. He is ready to pour out his forgiveness on you, if only you’d ask for it.
a. The point is this. No matter what state you came in this morning – know that you haven’t gone too far.
i. There is no sin that is outside the realm of God’s forgiveness.
1. There is no feeling of guilt or shame that is too strong for God’s forgiving power to overcome.
g. If God can take a devious, sinister, murderer like Saul or Tarsus and convert him into the history’s greatest missionary, then there is hope for you. Forgiveness is waiting for you.
i. It’s a lie to believe you don’t need God’s forgiveness. It’s a lie to believe you’ve gone too far down a sinful path.
1. It’s a lie to believe that God is a tyrant, waiting for you to mess up so he can chuck lightning bolts at you. That’s Zeus, not YHWH.
a. God is more ready, more willing, and more able to forgive then we give him credit for.
i. He is ready, willing and able to forgive our sins when we come to him in genuine repentance.
h. Who needs forgiveness? The Bible answers, “Yes, you do.” Will God forgive my sin? The Bible says emphatically, “Yes, he will.”
4. Must I forgive? – Which brings me to my 3rd question this morning, “Must I forgive other?”
a. And guess what the Bible says? You got it! It says, “Yes.”
b. A couple times in Matthew 6 Jesus says, “Forgive as you have been forgiven.”
i. One of those times is in the Lord’s Prayer. It’s a line that we can rattle off the top of heads without too much thinking – but it’s a line that should cause us to shake when we say it.
1. Listen to it, “Forgive us our ___________, as we forgive those who _______________ against us.”
c. Ever stopped to think about what you are praying when you say this line?
i. It is petitioning God to forgive you in the same way that you forgive other people.
1. What this line says is, “In the same manner that I forgive others, forgive me.”
a. To the same degree I forgive others, God, you forgive me.
d. So, that begs the question, what kind of forgiver are you? How do you forgive?
i. Do you forgive freely and fully? Do you give lip service to forgiveness, do you say you forgive, but then harbor resentment, of the offense?
1. Do you let bitterness and resentment poison your soul and steal your joy?
e. Remember, this is the Lord’s Prayer. This is a prayer. These are not lifeless words that we mindlessly recite.
i. You are petitioning to God to give you what you need, for God’s will to be worked out perfectly – and you are asking God to forgive your sins in the same way and to the same degree that you forgive those who sin against you.
1. Careful what you pray for, you may not like what you get. This is a pretty serious petition that should cause us to think and reevaluate the way we forgive others.
f. Earlier in the service we read the parable of the unmerciful servant – a great parable that stresses the importance of forgiveness.
g. The parable actually makes 2 main points – one obvious, the other not so obvious.
i. First, the obvious point is that before God, we are like the man whose enormous debt was forgiven.
1. Our sin, isn’t just this little, itty bitty inconvenience; it is an unpayable debt, that God by his mercy and grace, has forgiven us of.
a. So, the parable teaches, since we have been forgiven an enormous debt by God, we should in turn, forgiven the petty grievances, the small debts of others.
i. We can’t be like the unmerciful servant, demanding payment from others when we have been forgiven so much.
h. But there is a second and less obvious point to this parable.
i. The man who is forgiven and then tried to wring every last cent from a debtor is a servant of the king.
1. When his debtor sees him, not only does he see a creditor, but he also sees a representative of the king.
a. What this unmerciful servant does reflects the king whom he serves. As he chokes and imprisons his debtor, not only is he saying something about his own character, but he is unknowingly saying something about the character of king also.
ii. The debtor would be led to think that the king himself is a ruthless, extortionist tyrant. By his actions, the unmerciful and ungrateful servant is also speaking evil about the good king who had been so gracious to him.
i. What then about the church and its members? We are servants of God, forgiven much, representatives of God on earth.
i. When we refuse to forgive each other, or when all we do is point to other peoples’ shortcomings – think about how we are representing God on earth? How will other people see him?
1. At best, people see us as hypocrites, not practicing the things we believe in.
a. At worst, since we are servants of God, people come to the conclusion that our God is as harsh and as unforgiving as we are.
j. Every time we say this line in the Apostles’ Creed, or the line from the Lord’s Prayer, we must pause and take stock of how we are forgiving.
i. Even right now, if you aren’t doing an inventory of how you forgive, if you aren’t assessing the way in which you forgive or don’t forgive…
1. Then you haven’t fully grasped the enormity and the seriousness of this concept.
a. Must I forgive. The Bible says, with authority, “Yes!”
5. What is Forgiveness? – So, I’ve used this word a lot this morning, but to close I would like to take some time to think about what forgiveness is and what it is not.
a. There are few things as misunderstood as forgiveness.
b. First, forgiveness isn’t saying, “Oh, what you did to me doesn’t matter.” There’s this feeling that if we forgive it is somehow lessening the offensive against us.
i. But, forgiveness is actually the opposite. It is saying that the offense was so big that you can’t let it go.
1. Forgiveness is saying “This is huge and we have to figure it out.”
c. Forgiveness is not tolerance toward a sinful or abusive behaviour; it’s not about warm fuzzies and ‘kissing and making up.” That’s a superficial understanding of forgiveness.
i. So what is it? Well, the word Jesus used over and over again to describe forgiveness is the Greek word aphiemi.
1. The word aphiemi means to let go – literally it means to open you hand and let go of something you have been gripping tightly.
a. Forgiveness happens when we relinquish our right to be right; it happens when we open our hand and let go of the hurt, the bitterness, the anger, the resentment, the festering word that we have been holding so tightly to.
d. Forgiveness happens, not when we have warm fuzzy feelings, or we forget or brush off certain events. Forgiveness is saying, “I choose to release you, I choose to release me.”
i. Is it easy? No – forgiveness can be a long difficult road to walk.
1. It’s probably easier to brush something off and attempt to forget about it. But not dealing with the hurt and resentment is not a way to deal with it. It is difficult to walk with someone on the road to forgiveness.
a. But by God’s grace, one day, we will get there.
6. Conclusion – On the surface, this is a pretty tame line. I believe in the forgiveness of sins. Kinda just rolls of the tongue.
a. But to recite this line, to affirm this belief means that we believe that each individual stands in need of God’s forgiveness.
i. To affirm this line means to believe that God can and will forgive us when we genuinely and contritely confess and repent of our sins.
1. And to affirm this line means we believe that forgiveness not only flows in to us from God, but that it is to also flow out of us, as we forgive those who sin against us.
b. Forgiveness is a central part of the Christian faith. If it weren’t for God’s forgiveness, none of us would be hear in church.
i. And as we forgive others, we offer the world an alternative to its offended resented ways – as we walk in the way of forgiveness togethers, and we forgive others because we have been forgiven by God.