GUILT AND GRACE
INTRODUCTION:
ILLUSTRTION:
Article in the San Diego Union. The scene was the
·
Let's admit
it. All
of us at some point in our lives have to honestly say "I did
it."
·
There are things
we've all struggled with. We're all in
the same boat.
·
James
·
Obviously, when
it comes to the way we evaluate guilt, there are different degrees of
guilt.
·
Recognizing the
fact that whether it's one sin or many in our lives we've all slipped, we've
all sinned and we're all in the same boat.
·
What's the
difference between real guilt and another kind of guilt, a false kind of
guilt?
1.
WHAT IS GUILT?
·
We all know what
it feels like.
·
The Psalmist
reminds us what it feels like, “For mine iniquities
are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me.”
·
Everyone of us
knows that overwhelmed, burdened feeling.
·
That feeling of,
"I hope nobody finds out."
·
But does God mean
for us to live with it for the rest of our lives? No.
·
The purpose of guilt is not just to make you feel bad.
·
He has a greater
purpose than that.
·
Guilt is
actually a warning light.
·
Picture it that way.
·
It's a warning light that goes off that says,
"Something's wrong.
·
Something needs to be fixed."
·
It's like the warning light that goes off on the
dashboard of your car which says something's wrong.
·
Does it help to break the warning light when it's going
off?
·
No, it's saying something needs to be fixed.
·
Julie
and I have this conversation that goes on in the car sometimes. We're driving down the road and she says,
"What was that? I heard a sound in
the engine. Sounds like something's
wrong." I say, "I didn't hear
anything." She's got a pretty good
ear. She's usually hearing that
something actually is wrong. But I know
if something's wrong, I'm going to have to fix it, so I "don't hear
anything"! For me, the engine has
to actually fall out before I admit that something is actually wrong.
·
That's the way we deal with guilt many times.
·
We try to ignore it or pretend it's not there.
·
We've got lots of different ways of dealing with this
warning light that God sends into our life.
·
But the truth is,
if something really is wrong, the best thing to do is to get it fixed.
·
I could try to
fix the car myself but I'm not very good at that.
·
So I need to take it back to the manufacturer.
·
That's what we
need to do with our lives.
·
That's what the warning light is saying.
·
It's saying, "You need some time with God.
·
You need God to heal this."
·
That's the
warning light that God's bringing in.
·
Before
we look at the difference of how we try to deal with that warning light and how
God's able to deal with it…
·
Before
we look at how we try to fix ourselves and how He's able to fix us, we've got
to make a very important distinction.
·
There's an important
distinction to discover about guilt.
·
There's two
different kinds.
o
There is genuine
guilt. The real deal.
o
We've all dealt
with that, the genuine guilt that comes from the fact that we've all done wrong
things that have hurt ourselves, hurt others, and hurt the heart of God.
o
That's the honest
truth.
o
Unless we're
perfect (and none of us are) we've all had to deal with this real thing of
guilt.
o
This feeling of
genuine guilt.
o
There's another
brand of guilt that is very important to understand if you're going to get past
this and find God's grace in the midst of it.
o That is false guilt.
o
That's thinking
that maybe there might be a light on the dashboard that comes on and you're so
worried about it that you worry yourself into a guilt.
o
That's feeling
like, "If a light on the dashboard ever came on, what would people think
of me?"
o
There's many
people who deal with this false guilt.
o I can't tell
you how many times I've heard people say something like this, "I just have
this overwhelming feeling of guilt.
o I don't know
where it comes from.
o I can't really
put my thumb on it.
o I don't know
the source of it.
o But I just feel
bad."
o
If you're dealing
with false guilt you're probably sending yourself a lot of mental e-mail.
o
And they read
something like this, "You think that's enough... You call that
acceptable .... Look at all the things you haven't gotten finished. ...
You have disappointed the people that are around you."
o
If that's the
kinds of things you're hearing a lot if you're dealing with false guilt.
·
We need to understand that often false guilt in our lives
is the result of incidences that may not have been your fault.
·
Some of the people who struggle the most with false
guilt, struggle because they were caught up in the circle of someone else's sin
at some point in their lives.
·
It may be a
parent, a friend, a physical, mental or emotional abuse.
·
But somehow,
maybe even at an early age, you were caught up in the cycle of someone else's
sin and you feel that you just can't get that out of your life.
·
Maybe it was even
one of your own children.
·
You feel like because of what they have done,
that's come upon your life.
·
There are also times that false guilt is there because
you just can't get past your past.
·
This is what I
hear people say when they're feeling this way.
·
"I've asked
God a thousand times to forgive me and I just can't feel forgiven."
·
That's when you
can't get past your past.
·
Probably all of
us have dealt in some ways with false guilt.
·
What we need to understand today is that false guilt is
very popular among church goers.
·
It's a great
thing in church.
·
It produces a
faith that is more walls than doors.
·
There's no way
out.
·
It closes in on
you.
·
It's been a
problem for those who've been trying to find the truth of God for a long
time.
·
Paul talks to some people who are struggling with false
guilt trying to make themselves feel better by doing a lot of good things.
·
He wrote to them
in Galatians and said, “Are ye so foolish?
having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?”
·
But that's the
sign of what happens when we struggle with false guilt.
·
We can't feel
forgiven by God so we try more and more to make it better by our own
power.
·
How do you know the difference between true guilt and
false guilt?
·
How do you know
if it's God who's speaking to you or your Jewish grandmother or Sister Margaret
from parochial school or Brother Bob from some fundamentalist church?
·
How do you know
who it is who's really speaking to you?
·
Three
tests.
·
Three tests that will help you and I determine, and discern
whether this is true guilt or false guilt.
1. Is the focus on people or is it on God?
·
"False guilt is that which comes as the results of
judgments and the suggestions of men."
·
True guilt is that which comes as a result of divine
judgment, what God thinks about the situation.
·
If you're struggling with false guilt, you're going to
find yourself striving a lot for approval.
·
You'll be an
approval junkie.
·
You need other people's approval to make you feel better
about yourself.
·
It's a daily fix that you need.
·
And you need more
and more to help you feel better about yourself.
·
The real problem
with this is you live a lot of life worn out.
·
I have a hard enough time just living up to my own
expectations.
·
If you have to live up to everybody else's expectations,
to get their approval, that will wear you out.
·
Is it people or
is it God?
2. Is it vague or is it specific?
·
Sometimes people will say something like this, "It's
this cloud of doubt... a fog of guiltiness..." and they don't know how to
get rid of it.
·
I'll ask them
what it leads back to, what's the struggle they're facing.
·
And they really
can't say.
·
Almost all the time when it's the vague, foggy feeling of
guilt, it's Satan talking to you and not God.
·
God does it like a pinpoint of light.
·
When God wants to
speak to me about something, He's able to do it like a pinpoint of light.
3. Rules or relationships?
·
When you're struggling with false guilt the big feeling
is, "I broke the rules."
·
When you're struggling with genuine guilt the feeling is,
"I hurt someone.
·
I hurt my wife…
·
I hurt my
husband…
·
I hurt my
children…
·
I hurt the heart
of God because of what I did."
·
That's the
difference between the two.
·
The rules become more important than the
relationship.
·
So it becomes a religion rather than a relationship.
·
In church it becomes duty rather than desire.
·
False guilt blinds us to the miraculous work of God and
it binds us to the meticulous rules of men.
·
Which would you
rather have?
·
Whatever kind of
guilt we're dealing with -- true guilt/false guilt -- we've got ways of dealing
with it and God's got ways of dealing with it.
OUR WAYS OF HANDING GUILT
·
Back to the light on the dashboard: What are you going to do when that light goes
off?
·
How do you handle
it?
·
It's amazing how
we have common ways of handling these feelings.
·
They go all the
way back to the first man, the first woman, the first sin.
·
The ways they
dealt with that first sin are pretty common today.
Genesis 3 the
Bible tells us that they first sewed fig leaves together and made something to
cover themselves. Then they hid from the
Lord God. Then when challenged, Adam
said, "I
was afraid because I was naked. She gave
me some fruit from the tree, so I ate it." Three ways that are
indicated in the way they responded and the way we respond today too.
1.
We often respond with shame.
·
We feel bad about
it.
·
If you think you
can feel bad enough about the wrong things you've done to make them ok,
probably most of you have already discovered that doesn't work.
·
Shame doesn't work.
·
They sewed fig
leaves and tried to hide out.
2. Hiding.
·
They hid in the
bushes from God, as if God couldn't see them there.
·
That's like trying to put your hand over the light on the
dashboard that's going off, pretending that nothing is really wrong.
·
It doesn't
work.
·
But they tried
that one.
·
They hid
out.
3. Blame.
·
This is a popular
one.
·
It's sort of a
tragic, humorous story what happens in Genesis.
·
You've got Adam
and Eve and the serpent standing there and God comes.
·
God asks Adam,
"Did you eat of that fruit of that tree?"
·
Adam took it like
a man and he blamed his wife.
·
He points right
at Eve, "She did it. It's her fault.
She gave me the fruit."
·
So Eve's standing
here, blamed too.
·
She points at the
serpent, "The serpent did it."
·
Of course the
serpent didn't have a leg to stand on...
·
Isn't it easy to try to blame your way out of the wrong
things that have happened? We all do
this.
·
God has a way of
dealing with guilt, too. Very different
from our ways.
GOD'S WAY OF HANDLING GUILT: GRACE
·
1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and
will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
·
"if
we confess our sins" --
that's part of dealing with guilt.
·
That's part of
God's grace.
·
"He
is faithful and just" – this
is also a part of grace and how it works.
·
"will
forgive us".
·
That's how we
deal with the guilt that makes us sick and splits us up and tears us apart.
1. Confess
your sins.
·
You say, "God, I did it. I confess my sin."
·
Not just our need
-- our sin.
·
Not just our
frustration -- our sin.
·
Not just our
problems -- our sin.
·
What does that
word mean -- sin?
·
There's a lot of
fancy definitions out there.
·
The easiest way
to understand it for me is to look at the middle letter in the word.
·
Sin is all about "I".
·
It's all about my way.
·
It's all about me saying to God, "Excuse me, but I'm
going to live my life my own way. I've
got my own plans."
·
It's about me
looking at the car and saying, "It looks ok to me so I'm leaving you
out."
·
Whether you look
very moral in this world's eyes, or very immoral, you can still have that
"I" right in the middle of your life.
·
You can still
leave God out.
·
That's what sin
is all about.
·
Tell God, "God, I left You out. Because of it, I messed
up and it messed my life up."
·
When it comes to sin we do one of two things -- cover up or face up.
·
We try to cover it up and pretend it's not there or we
face up to it.
·
You might as well
tell Him, He already knows.
·
Why not be honest
about it?
·
Psalm 69:5 “O God, thou knowest my foolishness; and my sins are not hid
from thee.”
·
There's nothing
more difficult than trying to hide something that cannot be hidden.
·
There is nothing
more wearying, nothing more costly.
·
Why try to hide
it from God? Tell Him. Be honest with Him.
·
Telling God -- confessing to God -- means more than just
admitting.
·
The literal
meaning of this word is "saying the same thing about".
·
You say to God,
"I agree with You about this. It's wrong and it hurt. I agree with what You think about this
sin. I agree with what You think about
this wrong that I've done."
·
How do you do
that?
·
How do you tell
God?
·
You do it through
prayer.
·
Even right now
where you're seated just start to talk to Him about it.
·
He'll
listen.
·
Talk to Him about
the things you've done.
·
The Bible also encourages us to also tell a trusted
friend.
·
There's something
healing about that.
·
Look at what
James
·
You may have told God a hundred times but never told
anyone else.
·
Because of that you're still struggling with guilt that
keeps coming up about that sin.
·
There's something
healing about telling a trusted friend.
·
It's got to be the right person, but when you tell the
right person it takes that sin that looks so big when you keep it in the dark
when you keep it hidden, when you don't tell anyone, and it shrinks it down to
size.
·
You tell somebody else and they say, "Oh, yeah, I've
struggled with that too."
·
All of a sudden you realize, "I'm not alone!
·
I'm not so
impressed with this sin anymore. Or
depressed by it.
·
I realize that we
all struggle with the same thing."
·
There's something
healing about realizing, "I'm not alone in this.
·
We all struggle
with the same thing.
·
We all need God's
forgiveness.
·
So tell God, tell a friend.
·
That's part of
God's way of handling the guilt that comes into our lives.
·
The second part
of 1 John 1:9 reminds us to really experience God's grace we not only have to
confess our sins but we need to ...
2.
Trust God's character.
·
Many people confess their sins but really never get to
know the God who is forgiving them.
·
Because of that
they never feel the forgiveness that He wants to give. "... He is
faithful and just..."
You can count on God.
·
You can count on
His faithfulness.
·
I know a lot of people who think they can't get close to
God because they just don't feel forgiven.
·
In a way that's a trap, because the truth is the closer
you get to God, the more you'll feel forgiven.
·
When you and I get close to the God who loves us, who gave
His life for us in Christ…
·
When we get close to Him, we really sense what His
forgiveness is all about.
·
So as long as you hold God at arm's length, you're not
going to feel His forgiveness.
·
Look at His
invitation in Hebrews 10:22. “Let us draw near
with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from
an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.”
·
Jesus makes us
free from a guilty conscious.
·
That's what the
cross is all about.
·
That's what Him
giving His life for us is all about.
·
Once I've
accepted that gift, the invitation is, "Get close to me."
·
When you get
close to God and understand His grace in a new way it frees you to become the
person that He wants you to be.
·
It doesn't happen
through guilt.
·
You don't become
the person God wants you to be through guilt.
·
You become the
person God wants you to be through His grace.
I remember when I was in junior high -- 7th grade I think it was
-- I was going to ice skate for the first time.
We had to drive about a half an hour to get to the rink. On the way there the kids in the front of the
bus started to talk about someone falling and slicing their finger open and
they had to have surgery to try to put the finger back together. Then they proceeded to tell one gorey story
after another of what happened when you fell and how those ice skates would
slice you up. I determined in the back
of that bus, "I am not going to fall on that ice. No matter what happens, I am not going to
fall!" I can probably say that the
first time I went ice skating I did not fall once. Because I clutched onto the boards around the
outside the entire time! Scared to get out in the middle. What would happen to me?
·
That's how we
deal with God's grace sometimes.
·
You are in the arena, you know God's forgiven you, but
you're clutching onto the boards of legalism around the edges, holding onto
those rules like that's the way to really enjoy God.
·
I encourage
you.
·
I challenge you
today.
·
Get out in the
middle of the rink ‑- skate!
·
In God's
grace.
·
Enjoy His
grace.
·
You're thinking,
"I'll fall!"
·
Sure you'll
fall.
·
None of us are
perfect.
·
But He'll pick
you up again.
·
He'll give you
new strength.
·
And you'll skate
a little further the next time.
·
Yes, you'll fall
again.
·
But He'll pick
you up again and by His grace He'll help you skate a little further the next
time.
·
If you think
you're going to become all that God wants you to be by hanging on to the
outside boards of guilt, it will never happen.
·
It's grace.
·
It's grace that
allows you and allows me to become all that God wants us to be.
·
Get out in the
middle.
·
You can trust
God.
·
He is
faithful.
·
He is just.
Peter started to
sink but GRACE Picked him up.
3. Accept
God's forgiveness.
·
If we confess our
sins, He's faithful, He can be trusted to forgive us our sins and the verse
ends by saying, "... and cleanse us from all
unrighteousness."
·
He will purify us
from all unrighteousness.
·
What an important three letter word about grace (ALL),
what God's able to do!
·
Yet I know a lot
of people who ask for God's forgiveness, recognize that Jesus is willing to
forgive and yet they only feel cleansed from part of their sins rather than
all.
·
If you've already trusted in Christ and believed in what
He's done, why are you continuing to judge yourself guilty when God's already
said, "I judge you not guilty."
·
We all have this picture that we're going to be in heaven
at the pearly gates and that's where we're going to be judged guilty or not
guilty.
·
That's not where it happens.
·
It's determined here on earth, not in heaven.
·
Right here and now.
·
Today. You can
settle the issue.
·
God's willing to
say, "I will judge you `Not guilty!'"
·
Why? Because you deserve it? Of course not.
·
I don't deserve
it.
·
You don't deserve
it.
·
But because of
God's grace.
·
Accept God's
forgiveness.
·
Does that mean
you'll never fail again?
·
Never make a
mistake again?
·
Of course
not.
·
But it does mean
when you do, you confess your sin again, you recognize His willingness to
forgive, you take the consequences and recognize that His grace can even help
you with the consequences.
·
This
thing of accepting God's forgiveness is somewhat like getting a medical bill in
the mail.
·
Maybe
you've had a big bill at the hospital and all of a sudden the words, "Paid
in Full" appear on that bill.
·
If it
says "Paid in Full" are you going to worry any longer about that
bill?
·
Only
if you feel like, "I didn't really pay it."
·
If you
feel like, "Some computer somewhere made a mistake and someday they're
going to catch up with me."
·
I
know a lot of people who feel that way about their sins.
·
They
feel like "I know the Bible says this thing about Paid in Full, but
someday God's going to catch up with me."
·
But
what if, along with that hospital bill, that invoice, there was a letter inside
from the director of the hospital that said, "We're deciding to pay this
bill in full for you and if there is ever any problem with the accounting
department take this letter with my personal signature, my name on it. Take it in and show it to them and that will
make sure that they know that this bill is paid in full."
·
Would
that make a difference?
·
Would
that give you more confidence?
·
God's given us a
letter called the Bible.
·
The Bible was
written to us to clearly say He wants you to know that the sin debt in our
lives is paid in full.
·
Next time Satan
from the accounting department calls, show him the letter.
·
I'm sure there's
some of you who are still struggling with this.
·
It's a big
struggle to recognize how great God's grace is.
·
You're thinking,
"You don't know how big my sin is!
You don't know what I did. You
don't know the crime I committed."
·
It may have been
years ago and know one knows about it; I've been running from it.
·
You don't know
the abuse I created.
·
You don't know
the domestic violence that was a part of my life.
·
You don't know
how I hurt my kids, how I hurt my wife, how I hurt my parents.
·
You have no
idea.
·
How could God
forgive me?"
·
When you pick up
this book…
·
You
read the story of a guy named Abraham in the Old Testament.
o
He
started out as a guy worshiping idols.
o
He
had a lot of struggles with lying.
o
Yet
we call him the father of our faith.
·
You
read a story about a guy named Moses who at the start of his life was a
murderer.
o
Yet
today we call him the one who set the children free to go to the Promised
Land.
·
You
read the story of a guy named John Mark who was a coward.
o
He
left a missionary trip because some reason he was afraid.
o
You
and I call him the writer of a book of the Bible called the book of Mark.
·
You
read the story of a guy named Paul.
o
He
started out being named Saul.
o
He
went to churches and persecuted people.
o
He
actually stood by while Christians were murdered.
o
Yet
you and I call him an apostle and a writer of the New Testament.
·
God not only
wants to free you of your guilt, He wants to use you in a new way.
·
That's the good
news about grace.
CONCLUSION
·
I realize that
this has not been easy for some of you to hear.
·
For some of you,
guilt has become sort of a strange best friend in your life.
·
Sort of like a
Teddy Bear with fangs.
·
You cuddle it but
it will get you in the end.
·
You get real used
to your guilt sometimes.
·
It motivates you
in the morning.
·
You get up, have
a little guilt for breakfast to get you going, have a little right before you
go to bed.
·
You really are
wondering, "If I step out into the fresh air of God's grace I don't think
I can stay motivated.
·
I think I'd
plummet if I do that."
·
As if your guilt
could hold you up better than God's grace.
·
It doesn't make
sense but it's how we feel.
·
It's scary.
·
Its scary to step
out into God's grace.
·
It takes
faith.
·
For others of
you, guilt has been the enemy that you've been running from all your life.
·
You're pretending
that it's not there.
·
You've got a lot
of different tricks, a lot of different ways like all of us do for hiding from
it.
·
Psalm 32:5 “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I
not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou
forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”
·
Incredible!
·
Some of you need
the first half of that verse. “I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not
hid…
·
You need to say, "God, I admit it! I need Your forgiveness.
·
I'm tired of trying all my ways of making up for
it."
·
Some of you need
the second half of the verse. “and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.
Selah.”
·
The sad thing is
that for some people it's taken them 10, 15, 25 years to get from the first
half of this verse to the second half of the verse.
·
Don't let it be
that way with you.
·
Recognize that
He's the God of grace who wants to forgive and showers grace upon us.
·
Why?
·
Because we
deserve it? No.
·
Because He love
us? Yes.
·
Before you leave tonight you need to take a moment to
talk to God about what we've talked about tonight.
·
We need to admit our sins to God.
·
We need to tell God that we trust His character.
·
He is faithful.
·
He will forgive us.