The Cause And Cure Of Shame - Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Are we in unhealthy shame? Yes, when we sin against God. It drives us to God. There is an unhealthy shame when people sin against us. And unfortunately that drives us from God.

Douglas Mead states this clearly, this cure. He said, the surest cure for the feeling of shame, of being an unacceptable person, is the discovery that we are accepted by the grace of the one whose acceptance matters most. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt.

Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church, located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now, as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. This morning I would like to speak to you about something that virtually all of you have experienced and some of you are experiencing it even now. It's also something that you have probably never really talked to anybody else about. I want to speak to you about shame. Even if we can't clearly define shame, I think we all know the feeling. Shame is that sense that we have that we have radically disappointed ourselves or others, especially God. Shame tells us that we not merely have done something that was wrong, but that somehow we're fundamentally wrong, that we are flawed. Australian psychoanalyst Alfred Adler said that shame is linked to any sense of inferiority that we have. Developmental psychologist Eric Erickson said that shame is our perpetual identity crisis. It's interesting, Erickson believes that shame begins with the great toilet training crisis of every early life.

Chuck Swindoll says it a little bit differently. He said this, he said, Shame comes from years of physical or sexual abuse, or the lonely suffering that emerges from disabilities such as speech impediments, anxiety, or eating disorders, a prison sentence, or a time spent in a mental institution or a rehab clinic. Shame pushes victims to the corners of the room, into the shadows of society.

Shame becomes a relentless accusing voice that whispers in our ears. You are worthless. You don't mean anything to anyone. You're totally unworthy. You will never amount to anything. You blew it. You're finished. You see, the real issue to me when it comes to shame is profoundly simple.

What causes it and how is it cured? You see, mankind wasn't created with it, but it sure didn't take us very long to acquire it. Open your Bibles to Genesis chapter 2, Genesis chapter 2, verse 22, very familiar passage. The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man, and he brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, Isha, for she was taken out of man, Ish.

For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And then Moses wrote this, And the man and his wife were both naked. They were not ashamed.

Isn't that amazing? They were not ashamed. They were totally transparent, physically transparent, psychologically transparent.

Just imagine what that would be like. Nothing to hide, no insecurities, no hidden secrets, no greedy aspirations, no fears, no lust. That's right, no sin whatsoever. Well, we know what happened. We know that they sinned and that they fell. And then in verse 8 of chapter 3, Moses writes this. They heard the sound of the Lord walking, the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And then the Lord God called to the man and he said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. So I hid myself.

Don't miss this idea that what shame does to us as people. They didn't seek God. They didn't go to him. They hid. They covered themselves with fig leaves and they hid. And it was God who came to them. This is really the first steps of grace in the Bible.

The very first steps. God moving to meet man's need. Shame was now going to become part of the human race. And boy, we've spent thousands of years making fig leaves, hiding, trying to be something we're not. I mean, think of all that.

Think of all of the things that happened with shame. By the way, God shows he wants to deal with it. In verse 21, the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and he clothed them. God provides the answer.

Fig leaves are never the answer. God's provision, he sacrifices an animal and he makes skins for them and he covers them. But they continue in their shame. Not only do we try to cover ourselves up and we become... By the way, think of this.

How many of us are preoccupied with our fig leaves? I mean, how many times do we just buy clothes for a utilitarian idea that we want to be covered? Or do we want somehow to look like something that we think somehow that if people saw us in a different light and really nicely dressed that they would see us in a different way?

It's probably just shame. I mean, we do the same thing with our bodies, don't we? I mean, I think exercising for the sake of health is a wonderful idea. But come on, do you really believe most of us exercise or have surgery for health? It's for our health?

Or is it our appearance? You see, what's going on inside of us that causes us to do this? There's something else about shame.

It makes you defensive. Remember what happened? God confronts them. He said, what happened here? You see, what happened here?

What Adam say? I was a woman. I was just here and then she made me do this. I have no responsibility. And what did the woman say? Well, the devil, he did it.

He did it. And boy, out of shame, we have been doing that for centuries. Albert Camus, the French existential philosopher and agnostic if there ever was one, wrote in The Fall, each of us insist on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race in heaven itself. And that's what we do as people. Because we're ashamed. Erwin Lutzer wrote this, Shame made Adam and Eve fear rejection from God and from each other.

This feeling had them bound. They would spend much of their lives seeking new ways to remain hidden. Justifying their behavior to others would become their obsession.

For the most part, they would retreat into denial, simply refusing to admit their personal responsibility, refusing to see themselves as others do, and even insisting what God's word says about the human heart. Shame. Now, I understand the world we live in. If you read any anthropologist or psychologist, they will say that all shame is bad, categorically.

I respectfully disagree. I believe there's a healthy shame and there's an unhealthy shame. Let's take a look at the healthy shame. Let's go to Jeremiah chapter 6. Jeremiah chapter 6. Now, if there's a prophet where you think you'd find shame, it'd be Jeremiah. All right? If you get up in a really good mood and you feel all bubbly, don't read Jeremiah in your devotions.

Okay? That's not the kind of book Jeremiah is. If you feel lousy and you want to feel worse, this is the book for you. Jeremiah is a very depressing book. And the reason is that almost every chapter of Jeremiah is about God being angry and about God's judgment which is coming. And chapter 6 is no different.

He talks all about the certainty of judgment. But one of the things that God is so upset with these people is there's no healthy shame. Notice verse 15. Jeremiah writes, God speaking, Were they ashamed because of the abomination they have done? They were not. He said they were not even ashamed at all. They did not even know how to blush.

Isn't that interesting? That's God's perspective. They weren't ashamed at all.

They didn't even know how to blush. Therefore, they shall fall among those who fall at the time that I will punish them. They shall be cast down, says the Lord. There is a sense when I sin against God, there is a sense of my shame that's healthy. Lewis Meades wrote this, A healthy sense of shame is perhaps the surest sign of our divine origin and our human dignity.

We are closest to health when we let ourselves feel the pain of it and be led by the pain to do something about it. Maybe a better synonym with healthy shame would be this, conviction. Do you feel conviction when you sin against God?

Do you feel conviction when you come to God? You see, that's what healthy shame does. Healthy shame will get you to the position where you will come to God, and if you are God's, healthy shame will keep you close to God. The apostle Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 4. He told the Corinthians that he renounced the things that are hidden in his heart. He said because of shame. In other words, Paul said there are things in me that I'm ashamed of. I renounce those things.

You see, there is a healthiness to it. But that's not what I want to talk about primarily this morning at all. I want to talk about unhealthy shame, which I see in people all the time, believers in Jesus Christ who carry with them unhealthy shame. I hate to say this, but some of you have probably grown up in a shame-based home.

That's a terrible thing. A shame-based home. It's sort of, if I could put a slogan to it, you lived with the you're not good enough syndrome, and boy, you heard it all the time, and it creates shame. It's an amazing thing how children grow in shame, shame that is not theirs at all, shame not based on their activities, shame based on the activities of their parents, shame based. There are children who are abused physically, sexually abused, and when you talk to them, they feel shame. They feel that somehow they did something wrong, and they didn't do anything wrong at all. In so many homes, when a home ends up in divorce, the children feel a sense of shame as though they were responsible for something, of which they were not. You see, a shame-based home can be described to me with maybe one word, over. There is over control. There is this whole sense of over discipline, over ridicule, over criticism.

It happens all the time. You're never quite good enough. It has enormous effect on us when we grow up. John Bradshaw wrote this. He said, in this dead-end quality of shame, it is this dead-end quality of shame that makes it so hopeless. The possibility of repair seems foreclosed if one is essentially flawed as a human being and has been told that throughout their lives. Add to that the self-generating quality of shame, and one can see the devastating soul-murdering power of neurotic shame.

He then says this. No wonder shame lies at the core of so many mental and emotional illnesses. Shame.

The effects are astounding. Surveys have been done of people who have been convicted of criminal behavior, and one of the most common characteristics, shame. They grew up ashamed, ashamed of their family, ashamed of their neighborhood, ashamed of their heritage, ashamed, ashamed of their lack of ability to achieve, and it ends up in criminal behavior. People who have trouble with shame are often paranoid, and who can blame them? You see, that's been the imprint on their lives their whole life. Perfectionism. So many people as adults who are perfectionistic are perfectionistic because somebody told them they weren't quite getting it done right their whole life, and so they keep trying harder and harder and harder to be as perfectionistic as possible. Sometimes even people who have shame in their lives since their early childhood become what is called super passive. They become doormat syndrome people. In other words, they've lost all self-confidence at all, and all they do is allow people to push them around their whole lives. All because of this idea of shame, this unhealthy shame.

You see, the unhealthy shame is the shame that it's not based on your sin but on the sin of others against you. And we grew up in a culture. You know what it's like.

You grew up. You understand it. There's a certain amount of shame that comes from our culture. I mean, one of the things our culture does is constantly show you images of what the great life is and reminding you that you're not living it. You see, and the whole idea is you feel shame for that.

But take any group of kids. You have any kind of physical abnormality, and you hit a school yard. What happens? What happens?

It starts. You start believing it. You actually start believing it on your own. You spend your whole life. I'll bet right now you can almost go back to your early childhood and you can think of things people said about you and it hurt you, and you still remember it. Now, it's an amazing thing, by the way. You had friends and teachers and aunts and uncles that said wonderful things about you, and you can't come up with one of them right now.

But you can remember those. You see, that kind of thing produces in you a shame, an unhealthy shame. But since the Garden of Eden, God has offered us a cure. There is a healthy shame, yes, when we sin against God. It drives us to God.

There is an unhealthy shame when people sin against us, and unfortunately that drives us from God. Lewis Mead states this clearly, this cure. He said the surest cure for the feeling of shame, of being an unacceptable person, is the discovery that we are accepted by the grace of the one whose acceptance matters most. That's the cure. You see, basically what it means is I see myself as God sees me. I take a bath in the grace of God. You do that and you watch. The shame will leave.

It will come right off of you. Let me show you a passage that illustrates it. Joshua, chapter 5. Joshua, chapter 5. Now the book of Joshua tells you immediately it's the conquest. They're going into the Promised Land. Moses is no longer the leader Joshua is.

Israel has spent 400 years as slaves and 40 years in the wilderness. And now they're about to go in. And you know what these people are filled with at this time? Shame. Shame. By the way, don't you think 400 years of slavery would make you feel shame?

Four hundred years? Ten generations of your family slaves? They felt shame.

Enormous shame. Yeah, someone told them that they had an Abrahamic covenant and that they were going to be blessed and they are the people of God. But 400 years of reality told them we're ashamed of ourselves.

We are owned by other people. And then they get out after the deliverance by Moses into the wilderness and instead of going in and taking the land, what did they do? They ignored God. They didn't believe God. They were afraid of the enemies. What do you think that produced? Shame.

These are people just filled with shame. And this is what God says to them in Joshua 5, verse 6. They're about to enter the land. The Lord said to Joshua, Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you. So the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day. Gilgal means rolling away.

They got a town they named Rolling Away. Why does God want a town named Rolling Away right at the end of the Promised Land? He said, because that's what I want to do to your shame. He said, I want to just roll it away. It's an amazing thing about God. He doesn't want you to keep that kind of shame. He doesn't want that stigma to be in your life. God says, I want to roll your shame away.

I want it done with it. Because it's so debilitating to us. That's their past. What about yours? You see, is there anything in your past you just keep holding on to? You feel ashamed of? An assessment someone gave of you? Things were said to you?

How you were victimized? Or things you've done? And you're carrying the shame with you. God says, Gilgal, let's just roll that away. You see, let's be done with that. Now, if there's one single thing you remember this morning, and I always go just for one.

Everything else is laying yap. It's this. There's more grace in God's heart than there is shame in your past. There's more grace in God's heart than there is shame in your past. It's a very important message for you and I to understand. God truly understands shame.

I mean, you might say, are you sure that he does? Yes. Yes, I know it. And I know it because of the cross. In Hebrews chapter 6, the whole book of Hebrews is about a bunch of Jewish believers who have decided that it's too difficult to remain a Jewish believer in their world. They've been saved for 20 or 30 years, but the Jewish community has rejected them.

The Greek and Roman communities have rejected them. And so they said, maybe what we ought to do is sort of slide back into Judaism. And that's why the writer of Hebrews says, don't do that.

Whatever you do, don't do that. And so the whole book is showing why Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of Judaism. That was a shadow. He is the substance. And so when it gets to chapter 6, they thought, maybe we could go back to the sacrificial system of the Jews. And the writer says, don't you dare do that. He said, if you do that as a Christian, you know what you're going to do? You're going to re-crucify Jesus Christ. You're going to keep re-crucifying him. He's only crucified once and that's forever. And it says, you're going to re-crucify him and subject him to open shame. In fact, the writer of Hebrews understood something. That's what the cross is all about. The cross is not just about the forgiveness of sins.

It's dealing with the shame. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift.

Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word, 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. .