SUMMARY KEYWORDS

forgiveness, reflexes, god, prayer, forgive, jesus, temptation, pray, decisions, debt, called, life, pattern, relationship, healthy habits, conversation, follower, campuses, today, year.

SPEAKER

Phil EuBank

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Well, Good Morning Menlo Church, so glad to be with you. Welcome to our final weekend in this series that we've been in: focusing on the Lord's Prayer. It's a model, not a mantra.

Remember, it's an invitation for you and me to an actual not transactional relationship with God. And I hope it's been that for you. If this is your very first weekend joining us in the series, I want to say welcome and you can find the rest of the series online, it's a really important prayer in the life of Jesus. I also want to extend a special welcome to those joining us from the Bay Area campuses we have in Saratoga, Mountain View, Menlo Park, San Mateo, and online. It has been fun to read your emails and hear your stories about how God has used the Lord's Prayer to open up this expression of relationship with God in your life, because that's what prayer is, it's a conversation, it's an invitation to that kind of relationship. Today, we are going to finish up with the culmination of the most famous prayer in Jesus’ most famous sermon, in hopes that it would continue to lay the groundwork of faith in your life, so that the everyday journey of you following Jesus would become more natural, will become more of a reflex; it's what we're gonna get to in just a minute. Maybe for you, there are some pressures, there are some challenges that only you and God know about, and prayer as a vehicle to a real relationship is something that you need to do even more than you realize you did. But before we get started, I'm going to pray for us. And if you've never been here before, or never heard me speak, before I speak, I pray kneeling. And the reason that I do that is because whether you're a follower of Jesus or not humbling ourselves before the creator of the universe, is the way that we are told actually lines us up to the help and the hope that He has for us today. So wherever you are, would you just humble yourself in your heart as we pray together to begin,

God, thank you. Thank you that the soundtrack of our lives as noisy as it might be, can get turned down. Thank you that as powerful and heavy as so many of the circumstances we face in our lives. God that you are strong enough to carry it. I pray that right now you would. I pray that we would be able to hear from you as we study your word together. It's in Jesus name.

Amen.

Have you ever seen one of these before? It's something that maybe if you've been at a doctor recently, they've maybe used a reflex hammer, and it's not used to measure your strength, it's not used to measure your stamina, it's not used to measure your intelligence, it's used to measure one thing and that is your reflexes, right? So you kind of dangle your leg down, you know that when they hit it your leg is supposed to kick out, or your arm? And hopefully it does, right? Because that measurement is really important; it measures how your body responds beyond just the physical thought of what you should do, it's beyond your conscious mind; how do you respond in your reflex. And there's an acceptable range of reflexes and the way we think about how that diagnosis takes place that most people fit into. But at the end of the day, we all have reflexes, and I would argue not just reflexes physically, we have reflexes emotionally, we have reflexes spiritually, we have reflexes relationally. And so the better question may be for you, how are your reflexes showing up in life in all of those areas? When your body doesn't respond well, by the way to this test, when your doctor hits it and maybe has to keep hitting it harder and harder, as long as you haven't done something to make them mad. It's likely because of something called hyperreflexia, if you think to yourself, did you know that word? I did not know that word. But for any number of reasons, our body can actually have significantly reduced reflexes. And it's because the pathways that line up that physical response are blocked. And I think that those pathways to that kind of reflex cannot just be blocked in our physical body, I think that can be blocked in the way our reflexes show up all over our lives more broadly. And that's what we're going to talk about.

But before we get into the final part of Jesus’ Prayer, I want to remind you of where we've been so far, especially if this is your first weekend with us. This is a prayer that maybe you've heard before. And so just reflect on these words if maybe it's been a while, Jesus began His prayer with these words He said, Our Father In Heaven, as an invitation to His care, as your perfect Heavenly Father no matter what your earthly father has looked like. He said, Hallowed Be Your Name, an exposure to His power. Your Kingdom Come, a reminder of the real kingdom with a real king that isn't going anywhere. Your Will Be Done, On Earth As It Is In Heaven, an imperative to submit our lives in a broken world to the person and the plan that can really make a difference. Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread, an invitation to constant dependence on Him.

So we have quite this journey we've been on together, where we take these simple often repeated phrases from Jesus, and hopefully, they will now carry more weight in your life, they will be a pattern for you to think about the components of what it looks like to submit and surrender your life to God's strength and power. And the final section will expose us to this important lesson; that righteous reflexes come from healthy habits of prayer. That the types of things you and I want our life to exemplify, the way we want to show up in relationships, the way we want to grow over time, that happens as we have healthy habits of prayer more and more in our life. When we pattern our prayer the way that Jesus teaches we are developing those healthy habits, and it makes all the difference of injecting this real regular conversation into our real regular lives. These spiritual reflexes to how we respond, they go beyond our conscious mind, they're not just decisions we make they’re instincts that we developed, and they are critical. And the first reflex that we're going to see Jesus talk about, in the final words of the Lord's Prayer is that We Forgive Because God Forgave, We Forgive Because God Forgave.

Now most of us we grew up with some sort of encouragement to forgive others, right? Maybe it was on the playground as a child, or with a sibling; I'm the youngest of four, this definitely happened in my childhood home. And we were told to say, I'm sorry, right? Where we always sorry? Somebody said, yes, you're a liar. It's fine. God loves you. Or maybe you were told to say, I forgive you? Did you always forgive them? No, we were told to say I'm sorry, even though we weren't always sorry. We were told to say I forgive you, even though we didn't always forgive them. And there were really good things that came with that right? This encouragement, it probably made us understand that forgiveness was normal. But I think it also without necessarily meaning to, told us that forgiveness was pretend, forgiveness was an act. It was this thing that we said we did for someone until we needed that offense again, in a future argument. I'm not talking about your marriage. It was not a sincere act of setting aside someone's offense, which is what forgiveness actually is. See, the other side of forgiveness is that sometimes we as Christians can use the imperative, the command of forgiveness, to obscure or cover up the need for the offending party to change or repent of their behavior for the relationship to be restored. Because oftentimes, this is not called out. There is a difference between forgiveness and relational restoration, they're different. And when those things get layered together, sometimes it can get pretty dark. It can leave us resentful and angry even while we pretend to forgive someone.

The broader culture has really turned on the idea of forgiveness in general, and in an essay called The Fading of Forgiveness, the late great writer and theologian Tim Keller puts it this way. He says “Forgiveness is seen now as radically unjust and impractical, as short-circuiting the ability of victims to gain honour and virtue as others rise to defend them.” It's complicated, right? It's complicated to extend forgiveness. But Timmy makes the point that without it, we really can't love people. As a matter of fact, I would argue without forgiveness, you actually can't have real relationships. Because in case you haven't discovered this, yet, we all fail. We will all fall short. We will all both have to extend and receive forgiveness. And if I'm willing to be in relationship with you only until you fail and require forgiveness, every relationship you have has a shelf-life of to the point where you can't hide it anymore, or they can't hide their difficulties and shortcomings anymore. That as long as any of your relationships will last and God wants something more for you; people will disappoint us. Without the resource of grace from God and the reservoir of forgiveness we have because He's forgiven us, we are just waiting for someone to let us down.

Jesus has shared so much in the pattern of prayer that we've been discovering together. And He's provided this for his closest followers. And you and I we get to kind of look into the conversation 2,000 years later, and he focuses on forgiveness with this pattern, He says, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus is very clever in the way He offers this prayer; we are so thankful we're all on board. Well, even if you're not a Christian, you're like, forgive us our debts? Yeah, sign me up. It's the second half right? For just a moment though, let's let's step back from the conversation about forgiving other people about what they've relationally owe us. And let's just talk about what we owe. What debt do you carry?

Maybe it's a mortgage, a car loan or two, credit cards, student loans. Am I stressing you out yet? See, none of us piled that stuff up overnight, at least I hope not. It happened over time; one decision at a time until we found ourselves in a spot where we are watching a significant amount of our paycheck or our regular income go to service our debt. Without intervention some of those debts they will take decades to deal with. The final payoff by the way, isn't forgiveness.

When you get that final payoff, you've just worked off the balance, you've earned it. And I think that's what a lot of us think that's what forgiveness is; we're totally willing to freely forgive, as long as someone else is willing to do all the work to earn back our trust and forgiveness. Do you see the problem? That's not actually forgiveness.

Now, imagine someone called you today, and they let you know that an anonymous benefactor has paid off all of your debt; you will receive the deed for your house this week, the title for your cars, you will have no more payments to manage for that credit card that you've been figuring out how to pay down, or for those student loans that feel insatiable; they're all gone. And you think to yourself, here's what I do with that money. Here's what I do with that financial freedom. Here's how we would live differently. Here's how I would think differently. And I want you to hang on to that thought. This prayer from Jesus was written in Greek. That's what it's written in originally in the New Testament, but it was likely spoken in Aramaic. And this language, Aramaic carries with it a very very strong parallel when Jesus talks about debt to financial debt, to money. But Jesus wanted to make sure that his followers knew he was talking about something bigger than just their financial responsibility. So just a couple of verses later he clarifies his point He says, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your heavenly Father forgive your trespasses.”

See the way we understand this in the context of how God offers us forgiveness, isn't that God's forgiveness of you and me is conditional, that's not true. But it's that we're pointed to the supernatural reflex; because of God's forgiveness, we would also be prone to forgive. In other words, if we are not forgivers it reveals that we have not been forgiven; that if you actually call yourself a follower of Jesus, and you understand the implications of that, you go, how could I not extend that same kind of forgiveness to other people? Elsewhere, Jesus, He tells a story, just like the idea I shared with you a few minutes ago, when in our imagination, all of our debt was forgiven decades of debt may be dealt with in a moment, and then someone comes to you that owes you pocket change, begging for just a little bit more time, and instead of giving them more time, or simply forgiving a fraction of what has just been forgiven of you, you actually have them prosecuted for their debt. When we are unforgiving in our lives as Christians, it reveals that we do not understand the scale of forgiveness that has been extended to us. If you're a follower of Jesus, there is simply no way it can't eventually permeate our relationships. And I know that this is complicated. I grew up in an abusive home, and learning what it was to forgive my dad, even as he was unwilling and maybe unable to acknowledge fault was extremely difficult, especially as a young man as God was dealing with me along the way too. And if you're in a dangerous or abusive relationship, forgiveness is not permission for them to continue to hurt you. You should reach out for help today, you should raise your hand to have somebody support you today, you should reach out to us today. Don't sit in the suffering.

And even if your situation feels less dire than that, you are still allowed to have boundaries in the relationship to prevent the same thing from happening again; it doesn't mean that you don't offer forgiveness, but forgiveness and relational restoration are two different things. If you've never read the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud, even if you're not a Christian, I highly recommend it. This is a recommendation I just kind of make a few times a year because it's a really important idea. It's a great resource for this conversation. Because forgiveness, it's a one- time act of decision, as well as an everyday activity of commitment. We will grow in this reflex over time, and If you know somebody that's like, Oh, it's so easy for me to forgive, I never think about it again, I would argue you; probably haven't let yourself experience how frustrating or hurtful that thing was. And then for other people that go, I could never forgive, I just can't do it, I can't let it go, I would say; you maybe have not fully understood the level of forgiveness that God has extended to you. Now, we've taken a moment in each section of this prayer to reflect and ask God to speak to us about where we need to focus in each area. And I want to do that again, in this portion. And the reason is because we are told not to let the sun go down on our anger. And I think sometimes bitterness, and unforgiveness, they become such an underlying assumption of our life, that we don't even see it until we stop and let God show it to us. So let's pray these words. And then let's take a moment individually to ask God to show you where forgiveness needs to emerge. Maybe it's a face or a situation. Maybe it's recent, maybe it's a long time ago, but just pray these words with me. And Forgive Us Our Debts, As We Also Have Forgiven Our Debtors. Take a moment and pray.

God for some of us, that's the longest we've ever talked to you about it. It's the longest we've ever let you show us a face or tell us a name or remind us of a situation. God, we don't just pray that we would see it we pray that we do something about it, that you'd move us even today to take a step. It’s in Jesus name. Amen.

So when we let our reflexes atrophy over time, it's going to take training, it's going to take effort, like we just did, even just in these little small healthy habits of prayer, to grow those muscles of reflex again, but it can be done. This prayer is a tool in your life to regularly ask God to show you the gaps. But my encouragement is don't just let believing something correctly, or thinking something differently be enough. Jesus says that even the demons believe and tremble. The distinction for us as followers of Jesus is that we do something about it, that we have supernatural reflexes because of it. Maybe your next step is to text the person right now that God just brought to your mind. Maybe it's to ask, Hey, can we grab coffee this week? Maybe it's to pray for them this week. Can I tell you a secret? It's really hard to be mad at somebody you're praying for. Notice I said someone you're praying for not someone you're praying about, those are different ideas. This is really important, because righteous reflexes come from healthy habits of prayer; you can't do this on your own. But the other side of that truth is that our reflexes to life and faith are often destructive, when we are trying to live out our faith without prayer without this regular actual not transactional relationship with God. You can't do this on your own, you're not meant to, which leads us to our final section of the Lord's Prayer and the second reflex that we'll look at together today, which is: We Escape, Because God Delivers.

There are plenty of times when we convince ourselves that we have outsmarted someone, or maybe we've been crafty enough to avoid the consequences of our decisions, but that's not the whole truth is it? The easiest way to see in our lives and understand this concept is in reverse; if you consider your current capacity, your current decisions, your current freedoms, your current finances, your current influence, and you were to think what would it look like if me 20 years ago, was given all of that? And for some of you that math doesn't work? So think 10 years ago, right? What would it have looked like? And the quick diagnosis is that we would not have been ready to handle it, whatever that gap is. And one of the ways that I think God helps you and me and protects you and me from our own decisions, is by growing our capacity as our character grows. As a matter of fact, (usually) were crises in our life emerge is when our capacity grows faster than our character. When it looks like we can handle more than we actually can Jesus, He finishes this pattern of prayer by focusing on our capacity to endure temptation. He says it this way, He says “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” After everything that He has led us to put into our prayers, reverence to God's power, acknowledging God's kingdom, seeking God's kingdom in our crisis, depending on God for assumed provision, forgiving others as a result of God's forgiveness of us. He finishes with temptation, which feels especially important, doesn't it?

Even if you are not someone who follows Jesus, you know what temptation is, don't you? Temptation always calls us to decisions that we know will trade what we need, ultimately, for what we want immediately. That's what temptation does. The Bible describes that pattern of decisions and the destruction that follows it as sin, missing the mark from God's best for us. Rebellion against the pattern and plan your Creator designed for you, and we all have succumb to it. Temptation is never neutral. We are made in the image of God with infinite dignity, value and worth. But we are also fallen. And in our fallenness, we are highly capable of self justification and self deception. Nobody can convince you that you have a good reason for the patterns in your life better than you can right? The Bible describes itself as a mirror that helps us see our truest self all the good and all the bad. So if you look into the mirror of God's best for your faith, your family, your future, what are the compromises you are tempted to trade in for that future today? Those are your temptations; unhealthy relationships, unsuspend, unsustainable spending habits, unachievable expectations, we are chasing all of them if we're not careful and they can all fuel compromise. But they don't have to.

Now, for us, there's this Christian teaching that maybe you've heard before, that gets communicated that God will never give you a temptation beyond what you can bear. How many of you have heard that? Have you ever heard of that idea? God will never give you a temptation beyond what you can bear. Can I tell you a secret? That's not true. You know, it's not true. Like I, if that's true, I should have probably succumb to a lot less temptations. That's not what this prayer teaches us. Now, it is true that God has never allowed a temptation into our lives that we and He can't conquer consistently together. Remember, we're supposed to be dependent on Him. Jesus is not my crutch. He's my oxygen. I'm not trying to figure out how to wean myself off of Him so I can stand on my own two feet. I'm trying to figure out how to be more connected, more dependent, more reliant on Him. And if you are trying to battle temptations in your life alone, you will fail alone. That's the pattern.

So if we're going to escape as a reflex of God delivering us, what does that deliverance look like? Well, several years ago, when we were flying on planes, all of us were given permission, thank God, to continue to listen to or watch whatever we were listening to, or watching the entire time, which made me feel terrible for the flight attendants as they were explaining all of the emergency procedures, we might need to know. Because none of us are paying any attention, right? I just, it's really sad, except I will say our four year old pays tons of attention. He's got the pamphlet open, he's looking, so we're probably set, he's gonna definitely know what to do, right?

But we all assume we either won't need that information, or that we will remember it if we do. And I think we view all of this very similar. The path to escape on an airplane is very important. But you probably have never needed to know it. And I hope you never do. And so you could fly your entire life being given that instruction, every single time you get on a plane for the plane that you're on and never need it one time. And I think we think that about temptation, we think that about the way we live, but you have already faced a temptation that you needed to know the exits from today. And you will face it again today, and it's waiting for you tomorrow. And so if we don't pattern in our lives, this increasing dependence of knowing where the exits are and depending on God for that reality, we will continue, we will continue to fail. See, there are three things that I think God really, really really wants you and me to lean into in order to discover where the exits are, as you face temptation; And the first one is to know the truth. The second one is to live the truth. And the third one is to invite the truth. We know the truth by studying God's Word, and by making sure we aren't just assuming that our memory of a few stories from childhood is enough. Or maybe a few lines that you heard in a sermon are enough. That's not enough. God wants you and me to get steeped into who He is. And that's what He reveals in His Word, maybe it's a new reading plan. Maybe it's a devotional guide that you read, if you've never done this before. If you're looking for one that I'd recommend, I'd really encourage you to check out a book called New Morning Mercies by Paul Tripp. It's a way for you to know the truth each morning as you begin your day, to begin to depend on who God is in a more practical immediate way. But we actually have to live it remember? We can't just know it, it's not enough to believe it, we have to do it. So I just wonder where are the gaps between what you believe, and how you behave? Just like we talked about last week. And finally, finally, we invite the truth, by asking God and others to be honest with us about what they're seeing.

Oftentimes, this will look like kind of early warning signs for the decisions or direction of our life. And some of us, what we don't realize has happened is we are intentionally or unintentionally avoiding meaningful relationships in our lives, because we don't want this. And so you've got lots of reasons about why you're not in a life group, but the real reason is, you don't want anybody in your life, to tell you what's going on, that might be moving you a little further from God's best for you. You don't want anybody, it's none of their business. Well, it is their business. Because God's given us to one another, that we might support one another, hold one another, accountable, encourage one another. And so for you, maybe the step is to join a group, maybe for you, the step is to get involved in intentional community. Because you cannot do this alone. Every time you think God will never give me a temptation beyond what I can bear, I'm just telling you, that's a lie. He can give it to you, so that you will depend on Him and others to get you through it. That's, that's how you get through it. There are plenty of places where we are told to fight something in our spiritual lives, you know that. But with temptation, you know what we're told to do? Flee, run. Even the prayer is asking that God would show up and show us the path to run, so that's what we'll do. We're gonna pray this last line of this passage, and I'm gonna give you a moment that God would show you your escape plan, not for you to know it, not for you to believe it, but for you to do it. So just pray these words with me. And Lead Us Not Into Temptation, But Deliver Us From Evil. Take a moment.

God, for some of us, there are areas of our life where we have just simply assumed that we're never going to get past that, we're never going to find victory there, we're never going to experience that. And God, I pray that right now, even in these moments that we've given to you, you would show us that that's a lie. There is hope. We can find strength in you. We don't just need the exit God, we need you to walk through with us. We need you to bring people along that can do that with us. Would you do that today? It's in Jesus name. Amen.

You did it. You have prayed through the entire Lord's Prayer pattern. He gave it to us 2,000 years ago, and you're still learning it, you're still incorporating it, you're still working on it. And I know that the answers to these prayers even just in a few moments, they may bring more complexity to your life. They may bring a conversation with someone this week. And I would say maybe for some of you that means you're going to go see your prayer team at your campus after service today, and just ask for some help. We're just getting started, but well done. You have done more than most people will ever do. As it relates to growing their prayer. Life, but you're not done.

Now one more reflex that I want to remind you of, as we finish our time together is this reflex; Found People, Find People. Found People, Find People. For several years I lived in upstate New York when I was young, and there was this girl named Rachel, who was not a Christian, and I kept having faith conversations with her about life and Jesus. And I was young, and they were messy, and they were imperfect. But I tried to be kind and patient towards her, and she did the same for me, it was great. The conversation lasted a few months and then my family moved back to Ohio. And I didn't really think much about it until a year ago, or a year later, rather. I was visiting my church in New York more than a year later. And as I sat in the back row of a service, I saw a bright red head of hair in the front row. And at the end of the service, they turned around, and it was Rachel. And she saw me and she screamed, and she ran up and gave me a big hug, and her friends who I did not know, asked her who I was, and I'll never forget what she said. She said, This is my friend, Phil. He's the only one that would talk to me about God, when I was crazy.

Now, I'm not sharing that with you. So you know how incredible I am. There are hundreds of stories that ended the opposite way in my life. But I share that with you because, because I think that ultimately, if we know Jesus, one of those reflexes is that if you really are found in Him you can't help but find people who need to know Him. If you're a follower of Jesus, you have been found forever. And becoming finders of people who are close to us and far from Him; it should become instinctive for us. It should become second nature. And next week at all of our campuses is a tremendous opportunity to use that reflex that found people find people, to invite some of them to come with you; to come with you to a later or different service time, to come with you and experience church with you, and begin a series with us called Explore God, where we're going to dive into some of the biggest questions of our journey with God.

We're going to talk about how we can discuss and discover what it means to know God. For some of you, it'll be a great refresher course. But for some of your friends, for some of your family, for some of your neighbors, this is going to be the thing that God uses to move them from death to life; from an eternity separated from him to an eternity with Him forever. So I just hope that these reflexes that God wants to develop in you and me, that we would give God space to do it. Before we go, I want to just pray that he might do that for us this week, Would you pray with me?

God, there are so many of us that bring challenges and weight into a room like this, and we came to get that stuff dealt with God. And I'm so thankful that we're here and that you care and that that's, that can happen. But God there are also things in our lives that I think you're calling us to set aside for a minute. There are priorities in our lives that maybe we have made too big, that we can't see the people around us who are close to us and far from you. And so I pray that there would be people in our lives there would be family members that you're bringing to our mind right now friends, neighbors, co-workers, classmates, that God you would give us the courage. Give us the words this week to say you should come with me to my church this weekend. Do you want to know what I believe? God I would love for part of our story as a community to be seeing you move in our region in the weeks to come to see people who want nothing to do with you, not in any way possible, finding you and faithfully following you because of it. God use us for something bigger than us. We love you. To Jesus name. Amen.

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