A Savior For The Guilty

A Savior for the Guilty A lot of humor surrounds weddings. Millions of anecdotes to witty stories surround this whole magical thing of getting married. One humorous story, which forms part of the rich folklore, which surrounds weddings in South Africa, is the well-known incident regarding the telegrams read at a reception. Before fax-machines and the general availability of telephones, it was a custom to send a telegram to the couple who was married. At a certain wedding a telegram was sent meaning to read as follows, dear, (couple’s names being married), best wishes for your marriage, 1John 4:18. This is a magical verse, which reads as follows: “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. “ In this specific instance however, the Post-Office omitted the numeral 1, resulting in John 4:18 being sent to the newly-weds. John 4:18 however reads as follows: ‘‘you are right when you say you have no husband. 18 the fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not even your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” It was this specific piece of humor that kinda got me thinking a little bit more seriously about the intended verse, being: ”18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” The phrase “there is no fear in love.” conjures images of white pigeons fluttering away in the sunset with violins playing in the background. What does it mean? How is it possible that love can drive away fear? Last time I preached on this topic of fear, guilt, condemnation, and shame versus conviction, godly sorrow, and repentance, at least half of you were moved to live differently and you were deeply touched and moved to tears, while a few of you reduced the whole message to semantics – you think I’m just being wordy. While you’re totally entitled to your opinion, you are wrong. There’s some things I have an opinion about. There’s some things I feel really strongly about. But Phil will tell you that even if I feel strongly about something, I’m always quick to change my mind when I see a reason to. But something I never change my mind about is something that God specifically puts on my heart. If you don’t think God can specifically reveal a truth to a preacher by the Holy Spirit sometimes, well you’re wrong about that too. Again, you’re entitled to your opinion – you’re entitled to be wrong. But I’m asking you today to hear this sermon as something I believe to be inspired of God – maybe not every single word (I’m not writing a new chapter in the bible), but the overall message is from the

heart of God. So try to hear it and not dismiss it as semantics today. Some would say that guilt could be considered good when it drives us into sorrow over sin and into the arms of a forgiving God. Unfortunately, that is all that feeling in the pit of your stomach was ever meant to do. In fact, I’m going to go a step further into what some churches would call blasphemy, but what God has revealed to me through the study of His word and the knowledge of the Holy Spirit. Under grace (some people say under the new law, there is no new law – there’s one law and we’re not under it anymore, we’re under grace – if all of that’s confusing to you, just talk to me later). But under grace, in the New Testament, there is no good guilt for the believer. Now, some ministers would say it like this: guilt is like pain – we need it to realize what we are doing wrong, it alerts us that there’s a problem just like pain does, but once we realize our wrong, we are to repent and move on with life and not let it linger. I 100% agree with that entire sentence except the first word. Now, some of you may feel like this is just semantics, and maybe it is. But I am going to teach a New Testament concept with biblical New Testament words. Guilt, in the New Testament, is ALWAYS – I repeat ALWAYS listed as a negative thing under the law that we have been set free from and no longer have to live under with Jesus Christ. Guilt is never listed, as some modern preachers would say, as a motivator to do right. Here’s an example of how some people like to use guilt in modern-day churches. There are hardly any scholars left anymore who think that all suicides go to hell. Everyone who does any in-depth study on the topic realizes that the bible really doesn’t teach that at all. However, many of these same scholars who come to this conclusion think it’s a good idea to falsely teach it that way so that people won’t commit suicide. And so the people stay alive (at least physically speaking), depressed and ridden with guilt. Here’s a question: why not just tell the truth, not lie to people about what the word of God teaches, not take matters into your own hands and teaching false doctrine – just tell the truth, and trust God to keep them alive. If you want to be bold with them, why not say “ya know, it’s never looked favorably on in the bible, but the bibles really pretty silent on the topic, and there’s no unforgiveable sin, even sins you don’t have time to repent for can still be forgiven, but here’s the real issue Mr. Suicidal person: it is sin whether it sends you to hell or not, life and death are in the hands of God and you’re trying to take them into your hands, and that tells me that you need a better understanding of who God is and what He’s about. Now, can I tell you what He did for you because He loves you so much? Can I tell you what God thinks of you? Doesn’t that sound a little bit more appropriate if we want someone to move beyond the motivation of guilt and into true love of God that casts out all fear? I’m tired of lame

excuses for lying to people about what God’s word teaches – let’s tell them the truth, at least to the best of our ability, and trust Him to bless it. Stop doing things that we think are effective and just do it God’s way. There are 2 words used to describe what is good and pure in the life of a believer in the New Testament: conviction and godly sorrow. I believe a Godly way to think of this is that conviction stops at awareness. Conviction’s aim is to make you aware of sin, and to bring about repentance – so it’s purpose has been served when you have become aware of your sin. It was never meant to linger. When it does linger, that is what the bible calls guilt, and the bible says we don’t have to live under it any longer. Paul says it like this: “There is NOW no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” You see, that lingering guilt not only traps you. It kills your spirit. Paul gave a sermon one time that I think would benefit us to hear. Actually, it would be more like family time than a sermon – it was a time that someone could come in and give an encouraging word. I’m going to skip most of it due to time, but it’s out of Acts 13. Paul boldly stands up and goes through the whole history of the Old Testament and ties everything in with Jesus, then He tells them that they need to trust this Jesus person with their lives, and He concludes his sermon with these words that he wants to stick in their minds: Everyone who trusts in him is freed from all guilt and declared right with God – something the Jewish law could never do. Hmm. Maybe your pastor’s not so crazy after all. Maybe I’m not supposed to live under guilt. Conviction will come when God’s Holy Spirit puts it there, but once I’m aware of my sin I know that conviction stops at awareness, and so if I still feel guilty, that’s the enemy trying to tell me that I’m still under the law, like I was before I knew Jesus. See, there’s no condemnation for those IN Christ Jesus. If you’re here today and you’re not in Christ Jesus, I’ve got 3 sets of bad news and one set of good news for ya: 1) You are under the law 2) You are guilty of breaking it, and you should feel guilty, because you are still living under a law of guilt that you’ll never live up to 3) The penalty for breaking the law is death – eternal death – eternal separation from God, and it’s your fault and it’s your sin, and you should feel guilty – Now, here’s the good news: Jesus already knew about every sin you have committed to this day and every sin that you will ever commit for the rest of your life, He’s already paid the price for those sins, and you too can be free of all guilt and condemnation and begin living for Jesus today. Why would you choose anything else? Let’s look at one more, just in case one scripture from the word of God isn’t enough for some of you. This is Hebrews 10:1-3, but I want you to look it up later and just listen right now: 1 The old system in the law of Moses was only a shadow of the things

to come, not the reality of the good things Christ has done for us. The sacrifices under the old system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship. 2 If they could have provided perfect cleansing, the sacrifices would have stopped, for the worshipers would have been purified once for all time, and their feelings of guilt would have disappeared. 3 But just the opposite happened. Those yearly sacrifices reminded them of their sins and of their guilt year after year. This is what we no longer have to live under. If you are using guilt as your motivating factor to do things, you are not living as God intended a Christian to live. See, that’s the difference between conviction and guilt. When Holy Spirit conviction comes upon you and you realize you have done something against God law, you then repent because you love your Lord and you want to serve Him. You know full well that you are not under that law, but that law is a guide to walking in the presence of God, and that’s what you WANT to do. Guilt is that leftover stuff that hangs around for a few years telling you that you’re still under the law and that since you have broken it God wants nothing to do with you. Shallow religious “experts” think that a luscious helping of lingering guilt is good. But God doesn’t agree. Guilt doesn’t bring us closer to him; it drives us away from him. It ushers in ulcers and sleepless nights. We begin to wonder if that chronic cramp or that broken bone is God’s way of letting us have it. Maybe he’s giving us what we deserve. Guilt destroys people and families. It even kills. People often answer lingering guilt with greater guilt. I know someone who felt guilty about being raped so she slept with men to make the pain go away. The alcoholic feels guilty because he’s drinking his life away, so he drinks his life away to feel better. Or a man feels guilty because he’s a failure so he beats his family to feel better. Maybe that’s you, maybe you’re not that extreme, but maybe you have other tricks to bury your guilt. We beat ourselves up by donning depression and despair. We figure that if we beat ourselves up enough, the guilt will go away. Other times, we lash out at others. For instance, we’re feeling guilty about not spending much time with the kids. Our spouse leaves a mess on the table and we blow our top. The mess isn’t a big deal, but the guilt needs to come out somewhere, right? Any of this sound familiar? And there are other ways to deal with it. Maybe we try to purge our guilt by making up for it. If only we throw a few more bucks in the plate, maybe we won’t feel so bad about cheating on our taxes. Maybe we try to keep our lives so busy that we don’t have time to contemplate our guilt. It doesn’t work very long, it usually catches up with you.

So, how do you get rid of it? How do you move from guilt over sin, to a life of peace in loving service to a loving God? That’s a question which finds its answer in a sermon preached by Jesus’ enemies. Yes, I did say that Jesus’ enemies preached a nice little sermon - this one while he was hanging on the cross. Matthew 27:41-42 41 In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. 42 "He saved others," they said, "but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. (NIV) Jesus saved YOU. In almost every action movie, about 20 minutes before the end, what happens to the good guy? He gets caught, beaten up and bound in a seemingly impossible situation, right? Then he fights his way out and saves the day. But, is that what happened to Jesus on the cross? Let’s think about it. The chief priest, the teachers of the law and the elders were right; they understood that Jesus had saved many others. You will notice all throughout the Gospels that Jesus’ enemies never once questioned the authenticity (the reality) of his miracles – not once. Sometimes they said He was doing it by demons, which Jesus quickly refuted but they believed in the miracles; they just didn’t believe in Jesus. But that’s where their understanding ceased. They concluded that even though he saved others, he couldn’t save himself now. They were dead wrong. For weeks already Jesus had been predicting the details of his death down to the murderers, the whips, and the cross. Before he even walked into Jerusalem he said, “I lay down my life willingly; no one takes it from me (John 10:17,18).” We don’t like to think about what it took on that cross to forgive our sins – it’s heartbreaking – but we like when Jesus talks with this kind of authority. “I lay down my life willingly; no one takes it from me.” And his prophecy came true in the Garden of Gethsemane. When a mob came to arrest him, he calmly questioned the group: “Who is it you seek?” “Jesus of Nazareth.” “I am he,” he said. Then, when Peter attempted to rescue Jesus by cutting off one man’s ear, Jesus stopped the brawl and healed the servant’s ear. Then he calmly handed himself over to execution. Why do I tell you this? Because I want you to understand that he didn’t have to do any of it (He says I’m laying down my life willingly) the rejection, the whips, the slaps, the thorns, the nails, the hell – none of it! So, then, why did he do it? That’s where you come in. He could have saved himself, but he was in the business of saving you. The king of heaven willingly gave up the crown of heaven for your crown of thorns.

He donned your guilt and let God beat him up instead of you. Now church, He took your guilt on the cross with Him for a reason, SO IT COULD BE CRUCIFIED THERE WITH HIM! YOUR GUILT HAS BEEN CRUCIFIED! Forgive yourself, for crying out loud, Jesus already did! But that is not good enough for many of you. You are convinced that Jesus died for everyone else. You are convinced that you must have pushed it just a bit too far. You are convinced that I would agree if only I knew what you’ve done – or what you keep doing and saying you’ll never do again. Jesus cannot forgive me. He cannot love me that much. How many of you saw “My Big Fat Greek Wedding?” Why is Tula so upset throughout most of the movie? Because her Greek family is being such a pain in the butt about her non-greek fiancé. There is one particular scene where she can’t handle it anymore. In exasperation she finally blurts out to him, “Why? Why do you love me?” He immediately responds, “Because I came alive when I met you.” It’s a line that moves wives and girlfriends everywhere to dab their eyes with saturated hankies, but it’s actually pretty lame. You see, Ian loves Tula because she does something for him. She makes him come alive. Human love is kindled by kindness; it does not act on it’s own. But divine love is greater. It acts when the beloved doesn’t; it acts even when the beloved isn’t worth acting for. When Jesus met you, he didn’t come alive; he died. God punished him for your sins. Did you deserve that? No. Did you earn it? No. But it’s yours. That’s divine love. That’s Christ’s love for you. Jesus has not accepted you under protest; he doesn’t love you because he has to. He loves you in spite of your past, in spite of your dumb choices, in spite of your foolish years. God has already forgiven you. Now it’s time to get busy forgiving yourself. I know, it’s difficult to look at yourself, thinking, “If I hadn’t been such an idiot to begin with, this wouldn’t have happened. If I hadn’t been sleeping around, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant. If I hadn’t been drinking so much, I wouldn’t have ruined my life. If I hadn’t been so self-centered, etc. on and on the list goes. Maybe God can live with me, but I can’t live with myself.” Well, don’t be so arrogant. Maybe God can live with me, but I can’t live with myself?? What? Are you greater than God? - “God’s not good enough for me. I’m the one who has to forgive around here.” Don’t be so foolish. If God doesn’t even remember it, if he has tossed it into the sea of forgetfulness, why is it still putzing around in your brain? Rebuke that crap in the name of Jesus. Throw the demons in the basement and pound the door shut with three bloody nails from the cross — for good this time. He’s forgiven you; forgive yourself and get on with your life of service

to Jesus. Amen. You see, when we live under the law of guilt, we speak guilt and shame and condemnation into the lives of others because it’s all we know. We’re the ones (those of us living under guilt and shame) who never know how to answer someone when they ask us what God’s doing in our lives, because if we told the truth we’d say “making me feel like crap.” Then, as we focus on the worst things about ourselves, the bible and psychology both agree that we automatically become judgmental and focus on the worst things about others. Most of the time it’s the very things that irritate us about others that irritate us about ourselves. Find someone you consider to be an “angry” person, and rather than getting angry at that person (which I am so often convicted of), try praying for and seeing the best in that person. General Robert E. Lee was asked what he thought of a fellow officer in the Confederate Army who had made some derogatory remarks about him. Lee rated him as being very satisfactory. The person who asked the question seemed perplexed. "General," he said, "I guess you don’t know what he’s been saying about you." "I know," answered Lee. "But I was asked my opinion of him, not his opinion of me!" Ya see, when we set ourselves free from guilt and shame, and begin to see ourselves as God sees us, we’re not worried so much about what other people think of us anymore, and despite what they may do or say, because we are viewing ourselves correctly we can now see the best in them. Because, you see, when Jesus said to love others even more than you love yourselves, He’s taking for granted that you know how to love yourself correctly. When you realize about yourself that you are a chosen and royal priesthood, that the cliché about Jesus dying for you if you were the only person to ever love Him is actually true, when you realize just how precious you are in the sight of God, then and only then are you in a place to interpret correctly “now go love others more than yourself.” I don’t want to be misunderstood in this, so let me be very clear: the degree to which you comprehend God’s love for you which drives out fear, erases shame and condemnation, deletes guilt – the degree to which you understand that is the degree to which you are capable of loving others. It’s not just about loving yourself in order to love others, it’s about realizing God’s love for you. You ever try to do something for someone that you don’t think God would want to do for you? Do you really believe that God would wash your feet if he were here today? If you can’t picture Jesus washing your feet, then do you really think you’re going to do it for others? If you can’t picture Jesus doing that for you, if you can’t picture Jesus dying for you, if you can’t picture Jesus serving you, then to be frankly honest: you can’t picture Jesus. Those are the things Jesus does. And when we realize His love for us, those are the things we do for others.

Maybe today you’ve decided that you need Jesus in your life so that your sins can be forgiven and you can get out of the guilt that you deserve to feel, maybe today you realize that guilt is your main motivator in your walk with God and you want to have a loving relationship with Him instead, maybe today you realize that you have preached or spoken words of guilt into someone else’s life, and you’d like to repent for that and then be free of it. A pastor friend recently told the true story of one of his church members, an attorney, who after meditating on several scriptures, decided to cancel the debts of all his clients that had owed him money for more than 6 months. He drafted a letter explaining his decision and its biblical basis and sent 17 debt canceling letters via certified mail. One by one, the letters began to return, unsigned and undelivered. Perhaps a couple people had moved away though not likely. 16 of the 17 letters came back to him because the clients refused to sign for and open the envelopes fearing that this attorney was suing them for their debts. How profound! We owe a debt for our sin and God is willing to cancel it, but our view of Him is so messed up that we won’t even open the letter that explains it.... I want to tell you guys: I’ve opened the letter, or rather the book, and I’ve seen what it says – You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, there is no condemnation for you, the law has been nailed to the cross, His yoke is easy, come to Him and He’ll replace your worry with rest and peace, you are no longer under guilt and shame, and God loved you so much that He sent His only Son to die for you. For most of us, opening the letter doesn’t just mean opening our bibles because everything I just said is familiar with our minds, I challenge you today to open the letter with your heart. Pray about these matters, seriously take them before the Lord, and see what He tells you. Come forward and pray with me now.