Living to Win Over Guilt
Tom Shrader begins a new series on identifying and unraveling life's entanglements, starting with guilt. He defines guilt as both the fact of wrongdoing and the feeling of responsibility for real or imagined offenses. Through examining the rich young ruler's story and other passages, Tom shows that while human attempts to deal with guilt through denial, regret, or good works all fail, true forgiveness comes only through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
“Biblical Christianity is not about us reaching a holy God, but the story of a holy God reaching down to sinful man and providing one way to find relief from our sin - to come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Living to Win (2005)
Recorded: March 24, 2005
Duration: 48 min
Themes: guilt, forgiveness, repentance, sin, shame, freedom, redemption, healing, struggling with guilt, feeling condemned, burdened by past mistakes, new believer, seeking forgiveness, overcoming shame, parent feeling inadequate, recovering from failure
Scripture: Mark 10:17-22, Proverbs 28:13, Luke 5:32, Matthew 27:3-5, Leviticus 5:17, 2 Corinthians 7:8-10, Acts 2:37-38, Ephesians 4:31-32, James 2:10
Theological Themes: justification, atonement, conviction, sanctification, salvation by grace, biblical forgiveness, redemption through Christ, spiritual freedom
Full Transcript
Today starts a brand new series. We're going to take eight weeks, and you have outlines in front of you. The title of this series is Living to Win, subtitled "Identifying and Unraveling the Entanglements of Life."
Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take eight weeks and look at eight issues—those things that have perhaps entangled you, put you in some form of restriction, maybe bondage even. We're going to try to identify them, help you understand them, and then unpack it and get rid of it.
Here are the eight topics: Today we look at guilt. Next time, weakness, anxiety, fear, worthlessness, loneliness, stress, and uncertainty. Let me read you the list again: guilt, weakness, anxiety, fear, worthlessness, loneliness, stress, and uncertainty.
Two Immediate Reactions
Now, when I read that list, I have a couple of immediate reactions. One of them—not a lot of laughs. Not a lot of laughs in that list. I can't imagine anybody saying, "Oh man, that one on worthlessness!" It just doesn't seem to unfold that way.
The second reaction I have, and it's a little more of a sobering reaction, is that virtually all eight of those characteristics are something that every one of us deal with in our life at some time and some level. So when you're sitting here today, you have a sheet in front of you that says guilt. Some of you are thinking, "Bring it on because that's where I live. I'm guilty all the time. I'm always feeling guilty. There's always this sense of guilt." So we're going to talk to you about that.
All eight of these should be topics that you can relate to. When we look at guilt today, what we want to try to do is unpack exactly what does it mean and how does it play itself out in our life.
Word Association Exercise
If we were to do word association—and this is always scary because some of you fashion yourselves as clever and see this as a platform to demonstrate that—let's do a little word association. If I say guilt, you say sin. What else? I'm sorry. What else? Mistake. Conscience. Separation. Sin. Unforgiveness.
Here's what I want you to see. There's the guilt, and we go to the source of it—sin. Then we start to deal with the result of it, and you start to hear different words. Shame pops up. But what I want in the midst of all of this is some relief from it. When we say forgiveness, that's what I'm looking for. Not only by word association—when I've got guilt, unless I've got some sort of psychological disease, I want to find a way to get rid of the guilt.
Defining Guilt
So what we're going to do today is exactly that process. We're going to try to help you identify guilt. What is guilt? We'll use the standard definition from Webster, and then we'll try to help you look at this whole idea in terms of how do we respond to guilt, and then how do we get rid of it.
Here's how Webster defines guilt: "The fact of having committed a breach of conduct, or the feeling of responsibility for a real or imagined offenses." You've got two words here. I've got the fact—the fact is that I've done something wrong. I have a breach of conduct, and that implies that there's a code of conduct. Then there's a feeling—the feeling that I'm responsible for some offense, whether it's real or imagined.
Four Groups of People
Basically, there are four groups of people we'd look at. First are the group of people that would say, "Yep, guilty, absolutely guilty." It's legitimate. I feel it. I acknowledge it. There it is, and there's no question that I'm guilty.
We had a guy that came in one day to one of the studies. I didn't say to him, "How are you?" I didn't say to him, "What's new?" I said to him, "What's wrong?" He said, "Why'd you ask?" I said, "Because you can just see something's wrong. You can see it in your face. You can see it all over you. Something's wrong with you." He said, "Well, can we get a few minutes afterwards?" I said, "Sure."
We sat down afterwards with a cup of coffee, and he outlined basically months of behavior that included sex outside of marriage and drugs, a little bit of embezzlement, all sorts of problems. His sin is eating him alive. He is absolutely guilty, and he knows it.
There's a second group of people—those are people that are guilty in fact, but they act like they're innocent. Should be ashamed, but they aren't. "What's the big deal? Who cares? Everybody does it. Boys will be boys."
There's a third group of people—those are people who are innocent in fact, but feel guilty. We'll deal with that oftentimes with someone who, for example, their parents divorced, and they'll be saying, "What did we do wrong?" I am convinced that if you wanted to eliminate a lot of the ill in the world today, and you can only get rid of one thing—and that makes it particularly hard because abortion pops up on my list—but if I could only get rid of one behavior in that area, it would be divorce.
I see the effects of it year after year. I meet with people who are 30 and 40 years old who are still reeling from divorces that took place 20 years ago. This will sound like I'm making it up, but I am not: I had a grandfather, 93, and a grandmother, 89, that had been married 72 or 73 years, who had decided to get a divorce.
Perspectives on Guilt
I'm thinking about married couples in their nineties. If you haven't killed each other yet, it would seem to me at that point you just kind of roll with the punches. First of all, you don't have to roll much longer anyway. Just suck it up.
I love Johnny Carson. There was a great Carson line one night we were talking about. He said, "I read in the paper that there was a couple, she was 91, he was 92, they got married over the weekend." Long Carson pause. "And they spent their honeymoon getting out of the car." So that was a great old Carson line of his.
Last night on television they were talking about women, for example, who have been exploited sexually, maybe raped, maybe there's been some abuse, and there's oftentimes a feeling of "what did I do in this?" So they're innocent in fact, but feeling guilty. And then there's the last category of people, that's what we're striving to be, who are innocent in fact and innocent in feeling. Though we've sinned, we've been forgiven.
Understanding Guilt and Authority
In a broad sense, when we're talking about guilt, it's the result of failing to meet the expectations of some authority figure in our life. If we're going to have a breach of a code of conduct, there has to be this code of conduct for me to violate. So we play different ways with it.
I know people who basically pretend that either God doesn't exist. Therefore I don't have to deal with—when I said guilt, first thing you said was sin. Well, I don't have to deal with sin if there isn't a God, and if there isn't this God, then obviously He hasn't given me this code of conduct.
I just reconfigure God. I give Him an extreme makeover. He doesn't represent anything that would be the historical view of an almighty God. I just say, well, He doesn't really care, or it doesn't really matter to Him how I live as long as I do my best.
The Problem with "Doing Your Best"
And then, of course, we have to ask the question, are you doing your best? And you say, well, not always. So by implication, the answer is no. But that God doesn't mind because He has kind of a floating standard, and somehow He just says, "do the best you can."
The problem with that is really simple. The only way you're going to understand God and who He is and what He expects of you and His relationship with you is through this Word.
So you all can go down to Starbucks today, and you can sit there, and you can have some great theological discussions, especially if you start with a premise that I do, that everybody's a theologian, meaning everyone has a theology. If everyone has a theology and everyone has an opinion, what becomes significant is who's right, or is anybody right, or how can you know? Isn't that the question you get? How can you know?
How God Speaks to Us
Well, God spoke to us in a couple of ways, three that I can think of. One, we look outside, we see His creation, we go, "wow." Two, His Son Jesus came to this earth, and God became man, dwelt among us, we could see what God was like. And third for us, through this Word.
That's why we study the Word. That's why you carry it around. That's why some of you memorize it. Certainly why you try to understand it, because God speaks to you, not in some wild way that we can't confirm, but in a way that we look right here. So this becomes really important. We'll talk about it more in a minute.
So when I have a right understanding of God and who He is, all of a sudden now, I can begin to deal with this.
Our Goal: Eliminating Guilt
So our desire, here you go, by way of closing out our introduction, our desire is to eliminate the fact and the feeling of guilt in your life. That means lifestyle. What we're going to try to do is to discover and resolve this idea of fact, and discover the feeling that we can find as we begin to experience forgiveness.
So look at the outline you have, if you would. How do we respond to guilt? Again, reminding you, it's the fact of having committed a breach of conduct, or it's the feeling of responsibility for offenses, whether they're real or imagined.
Response One: Repression and Denial
How do we respond? Well, one is to repress it. In a way, to deny it. Proverbs 28:13: "He who conceals his sin doesn't prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy." Deny it. This is what the Pharisees did. The Pharisees were guilty, but basically what they said is, "we haven't done anything wrong. We didn't do it. We set up our own code."
It's the experience that you have when you commit—I had it. I walk into Sarah's room one day. Sarah's, I don't know how old, three, four, five. I walk in one day, and Sarah's got a crayon on the wall, a crayon on her mouth, a crayon on her face, and a crayon in her hand. And I said to her, "did you do this?" She said, "no."
Even Johnny Cochran couldn't get her out of this one, I don't think. She's guilty. Now, I can respond by saying, "no, I'm not." There's another way to respond. And that's to say, "I really feel bad about it. I'm guilty, and I really feel bad."
The Rich Young Ruler's Question
If you have Bibles, open them, if you would, please, to Mark chapter 10. We're in a whole different set of scriptures here today and moving around, so I won't have you turn to each passage, but this is really an important story to me, and it illustrates a point that is really significant, and I'm going to try to apply it so that you can see that it really has the context of the world you live in.
Mark chapter 10, verse 17, it's the story of a man we identify, not by name, but kind of by position. He's the rich, young ruler. "And as He was setting out on a journey," this is Jesus, "a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him and began asking, 'good teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?'"
I want to stop right there, because this may seem like a no-brainer to you, but it's a huge issue. That's the question for me that moved me from sinner to saint. And I do believe that as people, and I think it's virtually universal, start to contemplate what happens when you die, and there is some sense that there is a heaven out there, and we seem to love that. It doesn't matter. Every time I turn on TV and somebody's
That's a huge question for me. So I reach this point. I'm 30 years old, and I walk in one day to a Bible study. It's probably about a third the size of this, and Larry Wright is teaching, and he's got the scriptures open, and he's just laying it out there the way Larry did, just teaching.
I walk back to my car and drive to the office, and I am literally, not figuratively now, literally trembling under what I've heard. I've never heard anything like it. It's as though there were another 30 or 40 guys in the room, but I was the only one there, and he was speaking directly to me. It's as though he'd followed me around and taken meticulous notes, and now he's using those notes, and that's what I understand later as the Spirit of God applying the Word of God to a person's life.
Finding Larry Wright
I go to the phone book, W-R-I-G-H-T. Look it up today. There's a lot of them in the phone book. And then there's a whole bunch of Lawrences and Larrys and all this other stuff, and I thought, well, I have no chance here, but I said, let me try this one, and I dialed that one, and it happens to be the very Larry Wright that just taught.
I said, let's get together, and we did, and I started by sharing with him my theology, which was, I don't believe in any of this stuff. I don't believe in an Adam, an Eve, or a Jonah. There may be a God. I've certainly been raised, and I've been in church a lot of my life. Probably is a God, I guess, but I don't know how concerned He is about me, and in terms of going to heaven, it's just be the best you can be.
Larry said, listen, I think you need to understand something, that the Bible is the Word of God. I will tell you, if you're sitting here today, and you're struggling through all of this stuff, or you're dealing with someone, and you just can't get through to them, I'll tell you the starting point has to be that this is the Word of God. The rest of it's all opinion. The rest of it doesn't matter.
The Jefferson Bible
I sleep every other night now. The other nights, for whatever reason, I don't sleep as well. So I'm up the other night, and I have a radio that only gets two stations. KTAR, which has that guy from 10 to 12, Clark Howard, doesn't do much for me. And so then I go to KFYI. Well, KFYI, after 10 o'clock, does this goofy stuff. I mean, it's the bell guy, whatever his name is. Art. Art Bell's on the weekends. And it's all this, you know, there's people who are moving from other planets into this planet through a window like a door, like a light, and it just goes on and on and on.
So they do some theological stuff. They had a guy the other day, and he said, Jefferson Bible. And he was talking about the Jefferson Bible, and I haven't talked about that in a while. Thomas Jefferson. Some of you don't know this. Thomas Jefferson made his own Bible.
What he did was take the New Testament, and not even the whole New Testament, just the Gospels. He took the Gospels, he laid them side by side, and he just took out the parts that he didn't like or believe in, and he got what's called the Jefferson Bible. You can go to Borders Bookstore today and buy the Jefferson Bible. And they will tell you up front, it's about the ethic of Jesus. There's a great teaching. Good stuff in there. Lots of good stuff. No miracles. Jefferson's too smart to believe in a miracle.
So the Jefferson Bible ends, and this is probably poignant as we approach Easter Sunday. The Jefferson Bible ends with, they placed Him in the tomb and rolled a stone over the mouth of the tomb, and that's the end of the Jefferson Bible. Not a lot of hope in that deal.
What Must I Do to Go to Heaven?
Well, all of a sudden, I'm saying, okay, if this is the Word of God, then I ought to be able to answer most of life's questions in here. Open book tests. And I want to know this. What do I have to do to go to heaven? I want to know that. Because if there's a heaven, I want to be there. And I think even more importantly for me, if there's a hell, I don't want to go there.
So here's the question. What do I have to do to inherit eternal life? So Jesus says, you know, why do you call me good? And then He says, you know, do not commit murder, do not commit adultery, don't steal, don't bear false witness. He says, listen, here are these commandments.
Now the Ten Commandments were never given to us to keep. They were given to us as a picture of how we can't possibly keep them. It was a law to tutor us to say, you aren't going to measure up. And Jesus takes it to a whole new level at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, because the Ten Commandments come along and said, don't commit adultery. And we go, whew, no problem. Never slept with anybody else. He goes, wait a minute, if you've ever looked on a woman, ooh, that's a tougher one.
Do not kill. I've never killed anybody. Have you ever said raca? It means we don't really have a modern equivalent translation. It would be an idiot, moron, foolhardy. Have you ever done a character assassination? All of a sudden we go, ah, we're guilty. This guy.
The Rich Young Ruler's Claim
So here's the question. What do I have to do to go to heaven? Jesus says keep the commandments. I honestly don't know. If I started here with Karen, went all the way around the room and said, have you kept the commandments, and the implication here is flawlessly, perfectly, I can't imagine anyone saying what this guy says. He says, I've kept them all.
So here's the thing. What do I do to go to heaven? Keep the commandments. I've kept them all. Then there's an important word here. Look at verse 21. Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus is going to tell him something here, very, very tough stuff. He's going to say, I want you to go and sell everything you've got. See, if you really love somebody, and they come at you with these
Telling the Hard Truth
When people come to you with important, poignant questions, and you really love them, you need to shoot straight with them and give them the answer, even if it's the hard answer. Our tendency is to gloss over the hard part. That's why we love to go to these breakfasts where He says, "Oh, ask Jesus, just ask Jesus into your heart, and you'll be forgiven." Nothing about sin, nothing about a changed life, nothing about anything. Well, who doesn't want that? Put me down for a yes.
And then you go back and track them through. There's one of the major ministries. In fact, Billy Graham, for years, when they did follow-up, the general consensus was about 10% of these people that walked an aisle were truly saved. What happened to the other 90%? I'll tell you what—they sold a product that wasn't any good. Come and give it a whirl. Give it a try. No change, no sin.
You tell them the hard thing. Jesus loved them and told them the hard thing: "Now go and sell everything and give to the poor what you have and then follow me."
The Real Issue Behind Jesus's Command
Wait a minute. Is Jesus saying to go to heaven, I've got to sell everything? Think about that. If my possessions are sending me to hell, then the minute I sell them and give them to you, now I've condemned you, but I'm in heaven. Remember the thing the kids used to have, the time bomb, where a kid would pass that thing around and then pop whenever it went off, you were out of the game? So that's what stuff's like. If I have it when I die, I go to hell? No.
Here's the context. The guy's saying, "Listen, what do I do to go to heaven?" And Jesus is trying to point out to him it's sin. "Keep the commandments." And he's saying, "I've done it." Now Jesus is going to illustrate, "No you haven't."
Somebody said to me, "I'm living by the Ten Commandments." My question to them is, "What are they?" That usually stumps them. "I don't know, murder or something." So what's the first commandment? What's the first commandment? "Murder, murder, murder God." I mean, that's when I murder, murder, murder God. Love your God with all your heart, all your soul, love your mind. Don't have any other gods before you. I'm God. I'm a jealous God. That's what's encapsulated in that whole idea.
The Rich Young Ruler's Response
So here's what He says: "Keep the commandments." "I've kept them all." "Sell everything." Look at his reaction now. At this, the man's face fell and he went away sad. Why? Because he had a lot of dough. He's saying, "I kept all the commandments." And Jesus is saying, "You didn't even get by the first one. This stuff is in the way."
Now He goes away sad. That's a whole side point of the real issue we're after here this morning. He goes away sad. Why? Because he's rich. And I just have to shoot this in here. I hope you understand that generally speaking, wealth and Christianity aren't compatible. Are there wealthy Christians? You bet. And I know them. And some are in this room. But generally, stuff gets in the way. Rarely will you find a person who's successful in the world's economy and equally successful in God's economy. It doesn't happen that way very often.
The point is, the guy's sad. He goes away and he's sad. And there's no record that he ever comes back. We're talking about guilt. I come face to face with it. And all of a sudden, my response is, "That's too bad. Wish it were another way."
The Third Response: Judas's Despair
There's a third response. It's that response but tweaked up, taken to the next level. Matthew 27, verses 3, 4 and 5. There's a passage here. The problem with the passage is you won't let it tug at your heart the way it should. I think when you turn to that passage, you immediately have a flinch. And the reason is the second word in Matthew 27, verse 3. What is it? Judas.
See, the minute you say Judas, it loses all its effect afterwards because we have such a strong, visceral response to Judas. We have lots of scoundrels around. Jesse James may be a bad guy, but I still run into people named Jesse all the time. I've never met anybody where I say, "Hi, I'm Tom." And he said, "I'm Judas. Glad to meet you." I've never met one. We can't imagine collaring a kid with His name.
And I believe this section of Scripture would tug at your heart if it didn't have His name in it. Here's what it says: "When Judas, who'd betrayed Him"—Jesus has already been betrayed, He'd been arrested. The informer in there was Judas. He'd betrayed Him—"and He saw that Jesus was condemned, Judas was seized with remorse and returned the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. And He said, 'I've sinned for I have betrayed innocent blood.' 'What is it to us?' they replied. 'That's your responsibility.' So Judas threw the money into the temple and left and then went away and hanged himself."
When Remorse Turns to Despair
That is a weighty matter. Here's a man face to face with his sin. There's no denying his sin. He's guilty. He's acknowledged he's guilty. That's what he said: "I'm guilty. I have sinned." But he can't find a way to get rid of it. The remorse morphs to despair. He doesn't know what to do.
He's like Macbeth: "Where can I go to get rid of this? It's before me all my life. It's eating me alive." It's Psalm 32. It's Psalm 51: "My sin is before me at all times. I can't get rid of it. Return to me the joy of my salvation. I am mired in my sin. Where do I find relief for that? How do I get rid of this?"
The Fourth Response: Repentance
There's a fourth response. And that is what Jesus calls us to. Luke 5, verse 32: "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have come to call—I have not come to call the righteous, but to call the sinners to repentance."
I can deny it or regret it or be filled with remorse, or I can repent. I can resolve the situation that's between God and me. Here's a guy—I'm not a real adventurous guy in terms of foods and travel and all this. I've really only been out of the country. Well, I've been to Canada, which is like this a lot of ways. And just a little bit to Rocky Point and I get uncomfortable. And the only time I've been out of the country—
was to get to Calcutta. I wanted to go to Calcutta. So we went to San Francisco and then to Hong Kong and then Hong Kong to Bangkok and then to Madras and then to Calcutta. When we were in Calcutta, I just for whatever reason wanted to see it and feel it. What I didn't anticipate is smell it as well. It's a dark, dark, dark, dark place.
We got up early one morning and we were driving and we'd go down to the Ganges and literally the sacred river and you'd see bodies floating down the Ganges. You'd see people in there bathing ceremonially trying to wash away their sin. We drove down a road and on the left-hand side as we were facing was Mother Teresa's home for the dead and dying. On the cross, the street is a temple to the fertility god Kali.
I said, I want to go in there. We went in and I look like little Tommy Tourist and I had my camera and the guy immediately came up and said, no picture, no picture, no picture. I said, all right. He said, all right, picture 20 rupees. So I thought, things aren't too different. So I'm taking pictures of all these things and we get to the back and there's an area, I don't know, I'll say about the size of this bullpen area here. In the middle of it, the floor kind of slopes to the middle.
In the middle of it is a big drain, a pole with a V on it. I said, what is that? He said, well, hang around about 15 minutes and we'll show you. They bring in a goat and they cut the goat's head off and they drain the blood and they're making sacrifice for their sin. See, what do I do to get rid of this?
Human Attempts to Earn God's Favor
So we go, oh, we're not going to kill any goats. I got that figured out. Here's how you think. I'll go to church. I'll give money. I'll do good deeds. I'll hold the door open for a little old lady or a fat old man like Tom. I'll make the ultimate sacrifice. I will teach a small group at junior high camp.
I'm going to do something and God is going to be obligated to say, you're all right. You're okay. Everything's fine between us. No problem. We're even. Well, that doesn't get rid of it.
Biblical Christianity is not about us reaching a holy God. Biblical Christianity is the story of a holy God reaching down to a sinful man and providing for us but one way to find relief from our sin and that's to come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith.
The Significance of the Cross
What does that mean? It means to acknowledge that I've sinned and that my sin has separated me from God and that when Christ died on the cross, how poignant on the calendar is this? This is what we commemorate tomorrow on Good Friday. Jesus is crucified.
You know what's interesting? That isn't even like stop the presses stuff, really, is it? Because I believe everybody accepts that. I think if I go online and I get to Encarta and I type in Jesus, I'm going to get, here's the story of this guy, carpenter, get kind of a rough time frame. Interestingly enough, He's significant enough that our whole calendar is kind of based on His birth. That's kind of interesting.
So to say that He didn't exist seems foolish and so He exists and here's the story and some disciples and people would say this and then it would say He died on the cross. Virtually everybody understands that and accepts that. The question is why did He die on the cross?
There's a school of thought that says, well, that's just kind of political prisoners. That's how they killed Him. That's how they disposed of Him. Him dying on the cross, by the way, isn't particularly unique, is it? I mean, that day He dies, they got two guys hanging next to Him. They got guys all around Him. Thousands and thousands of people died on the cross. That's not significant in and of itself but the scripture tells us why He died. For the forgiveness of sin.
The Sacred Transaction at the Cross
And what we see at that moment is here's what happened. Do I admit this is difficult? You bet it's difficult. The sacred transaction that took place between the God of the universe, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That Jesus on the cross was treated as though He had committed or was guilty of every sin that anyone who would ever come to Him in repentance and faith who had ever lived, He is guilty of their sin.
That's the agony of the cross. When you hear the agony of the cross, it's not the beating, it's not the brutality of it. That's tough. But they did that to lots of people. Don't get hung up on that. There was a lot of physical agony for lots of people. Frankly, that went on much longer.
Jesus was there 3, 4, 5, 6 hours. They would oftentimes be there 3, 4, 5, 6 days. They had the ability to keep Him alive by giving them food and water more than we seem to be inclined to do to people who are hurting. They would live for a long time. The birds would come and begin to pluck out their eyes and eat the flesh. The dogs, if they could reach them, would start to eat their feet. Now that's tough.
The agony of the cross isn't that. The agony of the cross is when He cries out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? At that moment, God, in the terms of Jesus Christ, feels the loneliness, the abandonment, the guilt of sin, though He never sinned. Our guilt and the punishment was thrust on Him.
Payment for Sin
Every sin ever committed is going to be paid for in one of two ways. Either by Christ and the cross where it's paid in full, or by the person who committed it, never paid in full, but for the rest of all eternity. So now, the guilt is gone. I'm in fact innocent. In fact, forgiven.
Now let me take you through this process just so you understand it. Three steps. We've got ten minutes.
Step One: Awareness of Sin
Number one, you need to be aware that you've violated the rules. Leviticus 5, verse 17, if a person sins and does what is forbidden of the Lord, what He commands, even though He doesn't know it, he's guilty. So you may have come in today, and I meet people every once in a while who say, I don't think I've sinned. I don't think I've sinned. I don't think I've sinned. I've never heard it. I don't know
Every person who's ever lived is a sinner. How many sins does it take to make you a sinner? Technically, none, but we'll go with the answer one. Have you ever sinned once? Sure. And we instinctively know it. It's part of our whole vocabulary. I say, finish the phrase. I say, nobody's, and you say, perfect.
So if no one's perfect and everyone's flawed, and that flaw is called a sin. Whether I realize it or not, that isn't the issue. And I love to play the game in two ways. We'll say, well, I really didn't know. The other one is to say, well, they're not really big sins. They're not huge deals.
We Love to Play the Sin Comparison Game
You take this Brian Nichols guy. He shoots this person, this person, this person, pistol whips this person, shoots that. Now that's a sinner. Me, not really. No, I don't think so. I want you to go and get the Enron guys. I want you to go get the big criminals. You know, in the old days, the Ivan Boskys and the Mike Milkins. Go get those guys. Those are sinners.
And then you pick up your little book bag and out rolls the pen that says property of State Farm Insurance. Well, you decide, I only steal pens. So you're basically Ivan Bosky with no imagination. That's the problem. You're guilty. You're a crook. You just don't go for the big one. You go for the little one.
See, and that's the game we love to do. We love to play that game. Here's the deal. If I break, it's James chapter 2 verse 10, the person who doesn't keep every law of God, and the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who's broken every law there is. If I break a law, I break the law. See that distinction? If I break a law, I break the law. I'm guilty. That's the point.
It does not take any more grace to save a mass murderer than it does to save you. You need to acknowledge that. It doesn't matter about anybody else. What about you? I begin by acknowledging that I've sinned. Then I begin to acknowledge that my sin breaks my heart.
Paul's Letter to the Corinthians
Turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 7. Now, 2 Corinthians is titled that because there was a 1 Corinthians. And Paul deals with it here in 2 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 8. Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter. That's what he's talking about. He's talking about 1 Corinthians.
Paul had written him this letter. And in that letter, in chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians, he said we've got an issue here in your church. There's a man who's sleeping with his mother, probably his stepmother. It's stuff that even the Corinthian pagans wouldn't permit. And you guys haven't done anything with it in your church.
Now, those of you who are in positions of leadership of the church need to understand that that's the call for purity within the church. We're going through this right now. And look at what He says. Even if I have caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it, though I did regret it, for I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while. Yet now I'm happy, not because you were sorry, but because you were sorrow to the point of repentance.
A Real-Life Example of Church Discipline
That sounds like mumbo-jumbo. What's he saying? I'll tell you what he's saying because I've experienced and felt it. We're going through this right now. We've got a guy in our church. He's been there a long time. He is a cool guy and he has been a focal point of many of the things that have happened in our church. But he's involved in sin. It's ongoing, unrepentant sin.
There's a moment where he'll break and say I'm sorry, but he's reached a point where he's just going and doesn't want to live the whole package. I'm mired in my sin. And we've had to sit down and struggle with that. And we wrote the letter that starts the whole thing in motion. We wrote the letter Thursday. Wednesday, yesterday, he'll get it registered mail today or tomorrow, and he'll sign for it.
And when he opens it, it's going to say you've got 30 days. And in 30 days, we're going to go before the whole church and we're going to deal with this just exactly as the Scripture tells us to. And I've got to tell you, I hate going to meetings to begin with. Those are painful meetings. Those are tearful. You don't do that with a great deal of joy and laughter. That's hard.
And that's what Paul's saying. I regret it, but I don't regret it, but I do regret it, but ultimately I don't because it's for your own good. It's for the good of the body. So he's referring back to something previous to this. He's talking about this repentance. I know that it was hard, but ultimately, I'm happy because it led to repentance.
Two Kinds of Sorrow
For you became sorrowful as God intended, and so were not harmed by us in any way. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. But worldly sorrow brings death. Here's what he's saying. There's sorrow, and I will tell you from experience as you're sitting across the table, there's two kinds of sorrow, godly sorrow and worldly sorrow, and you can't tell the difference.
I've been through it where this guy sits and he cries and he weeps and he weeps passionately and he's heaving as he weeps. I'll never do it again. I'll do anything to get her back. Just tell me what to do. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And he'll walk out of there, and a week later he'll go do it again.
I've had other people who've been through that same expression and ten years later, they're the kind of people that are walking around your church and people are going, I want to be like him. I want to be like her. And it's a great picture, a display case for God's grace.
Here's what we're saying to you. There is the fact that you are guilty and there needs to be within you real, legitimate, godly sorrow. A heart that's broken.
We cannot really judge that. The only way we can judge it is by externals. I know I've shared it with you before. I was speaking to Larry one time and this guy comes up and he said, "You know, Larry, I've sinned," and he's crying and weeping and he walks away. And it's just this cool moment. I said to Larry, "That's incredible." And he said, "We'll see." I thought, "Man, you cynical old man." I find it now—I know what he's saying. Because that initial moment all looks the same. And there's only one way humanly we can tell: time.
That's why you see people—there have been people in this study—they'll come running in here and all of a sudden they'll be here, maybe it's their first time, and they'll come afterwards and say, "You've got to get a bigger place. This place isn't big enough because I'm bringing everybody I've ever met, everybody I've ever known. How long have you done this? Since 1991. I never heard about it. This is the best kept secret in all of Phoenix. I've never seen anything like it. Where are you going to get it? Go to America West Arena. You're going to need a huge place. I'm going to bring all my friends. I've been changed. My life is different."
And then there's a week or two or three, and after a month you never see them again. What is that? Don't know, but not godly sorrow. You've got to come face to face with that. Not in the judging business. All we can do is kind of look at that. Look at the fruit. We are not judging, but we are fruit inspectors. And we will look. And we will examine. And we have no other way of knowing how we can possibly begin to deal with you.
The Need for Repentance
Here's the third thing. Now, all of a sudden, I need to repent. Acts 2: Peter delivers this powerful sermon. People are, according to verse 37, cut to the heart and they say, "What do we do?" And Peter says, "Repent." It means to turn. It means to pursue the only course of salvation that truly leads to life and that's Jesus Christ.
That's a question we'll get a lot from people who are here for the first time: Aren't all religions the same? No. Don't all religions pray to the same God? No. Don't all paths ultimately lead to heaven? No. There is but one. That's why when we talk about Christianity, I try to use the term now—terms mean so little anymore I don't even know what to say—so I've tried to coin the phrase that we'll use now: biblical Christianity. Biblical Christianity says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me."
We spent almost 45 minutes on that. I want to just lightly touch on: I now have forgiveness in a vertical perspective. And that has to come first. But now, I can begin to live in a horizontal peace with the people around me.
Living in Horizontal Peace
Ephesians 4, verses 31 and 32: Paul writes this, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind-hearted and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." Here's what he says: Because we now have peace with God through Jesus Christ, now I can begin to live with peace with the people around me.
I hesitate to tell it, yet I know it's important, but it makes me look really good. It can be interpreted as self-serving. I hope you don't take it that way. If you do, you miss the boat. I've got a lot of things I don't do very well. I am the world's greatest forgiver. I think. You can screw me over and screw me over and screw me over and screw me over. And I've got to tell you, literally, I just oftentimes don't even remember.
I had a conversation about three or four months ago about a guy and he said, "Do you remember when he did this?" And I said, "No." He said, "Do you remember when he did this to you?" "No." "Do you remember this?" And I'm going, "No." "Do you remember this?" "Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Boy, that wasn't good."
Susan and I are dealing with a couple and they will not resolve. They can't seem to come to peace. And in the middle of this, Susan says, "Let me tell you one of the things Tom's taught me. Tom's taught me how to forgive. I've watched him get killed in public. I've watched people just take pieces out of him. I've watched all this stuff go on. I've watched people throw him under the bus. And two weeks later, he's out buying them lunch and hanging with them. And I can't do that. I want to get that. I want to fix that. I want that."
Here you go: Revenge is His. As far as it depends on me, you live at peace with one another. Now, that doesn't mean we excuse sin. You've got all that. But you've got relationships. What are you doing holding a grudge? Let Him handle it. And it's a great way to live. And frankly, if you really want to get somebody back, it's the best way to get them back because that really frustrates them. Because they want you angry and they want to argue. And I'm going, "I don't need to argue."
I got a call the other night from somebody who wants to meet and resolve. I said, "I'll meet with you if you want. But I've got nothing to say and there's nothing to resolve. Everything's fine." "But I feel..." "Well, that's kind of your problem. Because I don't have a problem with it. Everything's fine."
Good Guilt and God's Solution
In this whole area of guilt, I want you to understand something. There is something about guilt that's gotten a bad rap. We say guilt and go, "Oh, that's terrible." No, there's good guilt. If you're sinning and you're in a breach of conduct with God's law and God's prescription for how you're supposed to live, you should feel guilty. If you don't, you're pathological. There's something wrong with you.
Where do I go to get rid of the guilt? There's only one place and that's the cross of Jesus Christ.
Let's pray together. Father, thank You for Your Son Jesus, for the eternal life that's found in Him and Him alone. God, we feel guilty because we are. And yet, we can be forgiven. Not by anything that we could do to appease You. That's been done. That's what Christ did. And now we come along and we repent.
We believe Jesus is who He said He was. We plan for our life and death according to that.
God, thank You. Thank You for Jesus. Especially tomorrow and Sunday as we come to Good Friday and then Easter, I pray, Father, for the hundreds of thousands of people who this Sunday will be in church and maybe they haven't been there in a year or two or three, but somehow it's Easter and they feel like they should be there.
God, I pray that You use those moments to touch hearts and to change lives. And to let people experience the forgiveness that's found in one place and one place alone—in a right relationship with Your Son Jesus Christ. And Father, we pray to You in His name. Amen.
Have a great week. We'll see you next week.