The Dark Side - Part A

People who have not confessed their sins should feel guilt. Put it this way, if your sin is confessed, then you shouldn't feel guilt because it's been forgiven. But if your sin is unconfessed, you should feel guilt because you haven't addressed the real problem.

Everyone in the world has a sin nature and there's only one way to be redeemed from it. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip's son Nate Heitzig shares about a victorious hope you have in Christ, one that counters any of your faults and sins. But first, if you want to stay up to date on the latest from this ministry and from Skip, we invite you to follow Skip on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You'll find important announcements and great encouragement from Skip. That's at Skip Heitzig.

At Skip, H-E-I-T-Z-I-G. Now, we're in Romans chapter 3 as we dive into our study with Nate Heitzig. Although we are created in the image of God, and that's beautiful and wonderful to think about. When we think about that truth, for me, it's a comforting thought to think about that. But there is a dark side to us, isn't there? It's not all gumdrops and lollipops.

I wish that whenever somebody looked at my life or looked at any of our lives, they just saw Jesus. But that's not the case, is it? Why? Because we have a dark side. And that's the title of this message this weekend. It is the dark side.

And just because it's Halloween weekend, I'm not going to be talking about Star Wars or Darth Vader. This is about the dark side, which really is our very nature, which is the fall. And we're going to be talking about the fall of mankind and the sin nature that each and every one of us has.

One way that I like to describe this sin nature or this fall, this dark side that we have is, well, we have eternity in our hearts and we're striving for more and we're striving for greater and we desire this relationship with our eternal creator. Sometimes it feels like we just hit an invisible wall, doesn't it? Have you ever felt that? Like you so want to be better. You so want to be good. You so want to follow Jesus.

But sometimes it feels like you just hit a wall and you can't understand why that is. It repels us. Well, the problem is with mankind. The problem is with you and I, and it's called sin. Now sin is a word that's gone completely out of fashion. People don't want to talk about sin anymore. People don't want to be told they're a sinner. They don't want to be told they're wrong.

They want to be petted and assuaged and told that they're great and beautiful and unique snowflakes. Nobody wants to be told that they're a sinner in this day and age. And another word that regularly accompanies the word sin is another word that people don't want to think about and that is the word guilt.

Sin and guilt are two things that our society today wants nothing to do with. And that's because we like to believe that as humans we're basically good, don't we? We like to think that we're okay, that we've got it all together.

And that belief is reinforced by psychologists, by counselors, and even by a great many religious leaders. And an outgrowth of that is self-esteem. Self-esteem. Now self-esteem is the operative phrase of the day.

People don't want to be talking about sin or guilt. They want to talk about self-esteem. In a survey conducted in 1940, 11 percent of women and 20 percent of men agreed with the statement, I am an important person. Jumped to the 1990s, those figures jumped up to 66 percent of women and 62 percent of men believing that they are an important person. Jumped today, that number is around 80 percent of people will agree with the statement, I am an important person.

Another poll done by Gallup, 90 percent of people surveyed said that their sense of self-esteem is robust and healthy. And yet amazingly, as we look at society today, the fabric of society is deteriorating. Things are getting worse and worse, and yet we're feeling better and better about ourselves. Isn't it interesting how that correlation is happening? Society, the fabric of society, the fabric of what you and I hold dear seems to be slowly unraveling and deteriorating, and yet self-esteem is thriving.

But let me ask you a question. Does self-esteem make us better people? Does thinking we're good make us good? Does thinking we're righteous make us righteous? Does thinking that everything's okay make everything okay? An article by USA Today hit on the other side of this coin, and it did an article called, Self-Esteem's Dark Side Emerges, and it says this, as we squander money building students' egos, we feed crime.

We've heard it so often that none of us question whether it's actually true. You've got to feel good about yourself in order to succeed. The crusade to improve self-esteem has invaded every sector of life, public and private, but nowhere more pervasively than education. School reformers have spent millions of dollars in the past two decades trying to raise the self-esteem of poor achievers, and now a new study published in American Psychological Association suggests that raising self-esteem might actually be dangerous, especially among individuals whose inflated sense of self-worth doesn't comport with reality.

And we're all like, duh, of course. Participation trophies don't help anybody. According to three research psychologists who evaluated dozens of studies of violent behavior, high self-esteem is more often associated with violence than low self-esteem.

Isn't that interesting? Right now we have a generation of fragility, a generation that doesn't ever want to be told that they're wrong. They never want to be told that they failed. They never want to be told that they can't do something, and we have a generation that gets participation trophies in sports that they're not good at, a generation that doesn't want to get an F in a class. They just want to be told that if they try hard enough that they're going to succeed. We have a generation that is told if you believe in anything sincerely enough that it can be true, and the second someone tells them that they've lost or that they're wrong or that they don't get their way or they fail, they lose their minds. I challenge you, try this.

You might not want to, but it'd be funny. This week in 2020, try telling anybody that they're wrong about anything. Oh my goodness, the vitriol and hatred that you get from them because they might be wrong about something, anything.

It could be anything, and if you tell them that they're wrong, they just can't handle that truth or that reality. There's a possibility that they've made a mistake, and so they blame other people. Somebody else must be to blame. Somebody else must be wrong. I can't be wrong.

You must be wrong. The Bible tells us that this is one of the very signs of the end days. In 2 Timothy 3 verse 1, it's going to be on the screen that says this, there will be terrible times in the last days.

People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. Doesn't that sound like it was ripped from the headlines of 2020? I mean that sounds like a perfect description of society today, but we say I'm not responsible for my actions. I'm a victim. I have a disorder.

I have a disease. In his book, A Nation of Victims, Charles Sykes writes this, the politics of victimization have taken the place of more traditional expressions of morality and equity. If you lose a job, you can sue for mental distress of being fired.

If your bank goes broke, the government will insure your deposit. If you drive drunk and crash, you can sue someone for failing to warn you or cutting you off. Our problems today are a result of being a victim, which is the result of some syndrome or disorder. There is always someone else to blame. No one is guilty anymore. And that really leads us to this pesky thing that we talked about before which is called guilt. Nobody likes feeling guilty for anything. Nobody likes to feel shame for something they've done. As a matter of fact, Angelina Jolie, the actress said, I don't believe in guilt. I believe in living on impulse. I think you should live completely free. Obviously, she doesn't think that Brad should live completely free because he lived on impulse and she didn't want him to, but she should. Why is it that we feel guilt?

Let me ask you maybe a better question. Should we feel guilt? Should we experience guilt?

Is it good? Or like society is telling us, is it a bad thing? What about sin? Is sin real? Is there somebody who's defining and setting a list of things that are right and wrong? Or are we all just victims with diseases? And is self-esteem the answer to our problems today?

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm sick and tired of hearing what society in Hollywood has to say about this topic. So let's see what God says. Let's turn to Romans chapter three and read verses 10 through 20. There is none righteous. No, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good.

No, not one. Their throat is an open tooth. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to under the law that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Let's stop there. We're going to read the rest of those verses in just a second.

But here Paul addresses the issue, and that is this. Men feel guilty for one reason. They are. You and I feel guilty for one reason. We are. We are guilty. We should feel guilt. We should feel shame, because we collectively as a society, as mankind, have done things that we should feel guilty about. See, the guilt feeling is only the symptom of the real problem. The real problem isn't guilt. The real problem is sin. Now, I do believe that there is a problem to a certain extent with self-esteem in this culture. I think it's good to be sure in who God created you to be. It's good to have esteem in God and who God made you to be. And I also think that some Christians really struggle with guilt in an unhealthy way.

I've known a lot of people who come. They give their lives to Christ. They're forgiven of their sins. They've repented of their sins, but they can't get away from the guilt of what they've done in their past. And so they're constantly living in their past rather than in the new creation that Christ has made them to be.

And that's unhealthy. But the opposite is also true. People who have not confessed their sins should feel guilt.

Put it this way. If your sin is confessed, then you shouldn't feel guilt because it's been forgiven. But if your sin is unconfessed, you should feel guilt because you haven't addressed the real problem. And all the psychological counseling in the world cannot relieve a person of this kind of guilt. You can pretend it's not there.

You can find someone else to blame for your problems. But the only real and effective way to remove guilt is to get to the root of the problem, which plainly is sin. Donald Gray Barnhouse put it this way. He said, man stands before God today like a little boy who swears with crying tears that he has not been anywhere near the jam jar and with an air of outraged innocence pleads the justice of his position in total ignorance of the fact that a good spoonful of the jam has fallen just on his shirt under his chin and is plainly visible to everyone but himself.

It's a perfect description of society, of mankind. We like to plead our innocence, say that we're good, say that we haven't done anything. All the while the jam is sitting on our shirts showing the world and showing God that we indeed are guilty.

In this passage it says though we are in God's courtroom and Paul is allowing us to give our defense and he patiently waits as each and every person gives every known excuse for why they've done what they've done or why they deserve to go to heaven. Well it was my upbringing. That's why I am the way that I am. I'm not actually that bad. There's other people who are worse than me. I didn't know that this was the truth.

No one told me that there was right and wrong. And then with absolute precision he systematically destroys every potential argument that we have for why we think we're good and that's what a good chunk of Romans is about. And at the end no one is left standing. The Holy Spirit shows through Paul that every single one of us has sinned. Everyone. The ignorant pagan who doesn't know the difference. The religious person who thinks that they're doing a number of religious things and that's going to make them good.

The moralist who thinks that if they're just a good person and are kind to people that that's going to be enough. Beginning with verse 10 and continuing through verse 18 Paul introduces before the court as it were a testimony. The testimony of God's word as revealed in the Old Testament.

Let's look at our first point and that is that you and I are charged by our conduct. Let's read verses 10 through 17 again and as we do we're going to see that Paul breaks this section up into 13 different charges and they're presented in three different categories. The first category verses 10 through 12 is concerning the character. That is to say the innermost being.

Not the outward man that the world sees. Not the outward actions of good and bad but the inward heart. Next Paul transitions to the conversation in verses 13 through 14. He addresses things that come from our lips. Things that come from our mouth. And then finally he addresses our conduct in verses 15 through 17.

This is the outworking. This is the outward actions that the world actually sees. And as we go through this it's important to understand that he put this in order for a reason because there's some people out there who say I'm a good person because I do good things. But then the question is okay you do good things but do you always say good things? When you're in a room with certain people are there things that come out of your mouth? Do you tear people down? Do you lie? Do you slander?

Do you gossip? And then Paul carries it and says okay maybe you do good things and you say good things but what about your heart? Do you think bad things? Do you think evil things?

Where is your heart in this situation? So Paul systematically gives us an understanding of if you want to be a good person and go to heaven based on your good works and your law this is the criteria. Let's read again verses 10 through 17. There is none righteous no not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable.

There is none who does good no not one. Now Paul moves from the character and he addresses the conversation. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. And now verse 15 to 17 he shifts to our conduct.

Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. In verse 10 Paul starts it off and he says there is none righteous no not one. Now I don't know about you but it's easy to read that and say Paul that seems a little extreme. I mean there's some righteous people in the world right? I mean you've got to be righteous Paul.

The apostles have to be righteous. There's got to be some good people some righteous people in the world but it's essential to know that what Paul is speaking of is he's speaking of something that is not under your control because again he's not speaking of outward righteousness. He's speaking of inward character and he's speaking of a built-in sin nature that you have absolutely no control over because somebody named Adam made a choice thousands of years ago that brings that sin nature and is built into you because of the decisions that Adam and Eve made within the garden.

It's essential to understand this because again he's talking about the innermost being. This is a sinful nature that we inherited through Adam the dark side. Let's put it this way my sins don't make me a sinner. My sins are simply evidence of the truth and that is that I am a sinner. Or put it this way we are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we're sinners. The reason you and I sin is because we have a built-in sin nature.

You don't teach a baby how to sin. That built-in sin nature ultimately gets expressed because they're sinners. David recognized this when he wrote in Psalm 51, Behold I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me. A similar description of our sinful nature is found in Psalm 58 verse 3. He says the wicked are estranged from the womb.

They go astray as soon as they are born speaking lies. Paul again affirms this when he says we were by nature the children of wrath like the rest of mankind. You and I are born with a sin nature. Now of course we don't all commit the same sins. You and I each struggle with unique things that are hardwired into us because of that sin nature. There's certain predispositions that you might have because of that sin nature.

And I also believe even though all sin is level at the foot of the cross and it's viewed the same by Jesus there are some sins that are in many way worse than others because of the physical consequences that they bring. And certainly there is an innocence in a child especially a small one. Who in here has had kids before or has kids now? Do you remember holding your baby the first time and looking at your baby the first time? It was so innocent and pure you didn't look at your baby for the first time and say you little sinner.

No that thought didn't even come to your mind. That baby could do no wrong. It was perfect but not for long. Give it a few months and that sin nature becomes manifested in its actions. It begins to do things that you didn't have to teach it. You didn't have to teach it to lie. You didn't have to teach it to steal.

You didn't have to teach your baby how to throw a tantrum when it doesn't get what it wants. The sin nature is alive and well in each and every one of us. Verse 10 Paul says again there's none righteous no not one. Then he carries it on a little bit further in verse 12 and he says not only is there none righteous but there's no one who does any good. There's no one who does good. No not one.

Now again we can read this and say Paul that's a bit melodramatic. There's a lot of people who do good things. There's a lot of people who do kind things. We have nurses and doctors. They do good things.

We have strangers who help little old ladies across the road. That's a good thing to do. Now what Paul is saying again he's not addressing our outward actions. Remember he's addressing our inward character and he's addressing what the definition of good is and also who gets to define the definition of what good is. See this does not mean that man does not do commendable things because there are people who are great humanitarians and heroes today. I like you have met many non-believers who were good people.

Honest, caring, considerate. Sometimes by the way even more so than professed Christians which is a serious indictment on the church. But that's not what this message is talking about. That's not the issue being dealt with here. God is not saying that there is no good in man in general. Rather he's saying that there is no good in man that can satisfy God.

That's the distinguishing factor here. There's no good with inside you or me that can satisfy God. Paul said in Romans 8 verse 8 those that are in the flesh cannot please God. The word righteous means one who is such as he ought to be. And when the Bible says there is no one righteous he's not speaking so much of behavior but again of inner character. See God's standards are high to say the least. God's standards if you want to know what God's standards are for you to get into heaven based off of your own works is that you must be absolutely perfect.

Absolutely perfect. Not just in your outward conduct verses 15 through 17. You must always do good. You must never do bad. You must perpetually do good.

You must also perpetually speak good. You can never say anything bad about anybody. Never slander anybody. And also your thoughts. You can never think bad about anybody. You can never think evil thoughts or impure thoughts or selfish thoughts. You must be 100% absolutely perfect. Jesus described in Matthew 5 48 a step further and he said you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. My name is Skip and I'm a non-conformist.

How about you? Do you go with the flow or swim against the current? The truth is going against the status quo can be difficult but following Jesus requires it. The Bible's account of Daniel shows how God can transform lives by one person's willingness to defy what's normal. I like to think of it this way when the waves of life came crashing down Daniel decided to go surfing.

He thought I'm going to ride these waves. If these waves are the will of God for my life I'm going to learn how to master these things and I'm going to get propelled forward. Learn to soar above the status quo with Skip Heitzig's book Defying Normal. It's our way of saying thanks for your gift of $35 or more to help connect more people to God's word and when you give we'll also include the booklet What on Earth Am I Here For by Rick Warren. These two resources will help you stand out from the crowd for God's glory. Visit connectwithskip.com slash offer to give online securely today or call 800-922-1888. Tune in tomorrow as Skip's son Nate Heitzig shares about the freedom and hope you have in Christ alone. That's what the law is it's a mirror for us to look in and go oh that's who that's me that's what I look like those are the things that I struggle with oh that's bad and the mirror's like yeah it is bad you should do something about it see the law is a preparation for the gospel the gospel is the provision the law is just a preparation for the gospel the gospel is the provision of the law Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.