Guilt - Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. They felt guilty, said, we'll hide. And then God comes in the garden, Adam, where are you?

You know that story. And then you'll notice what they did when God asked them to acknowledge their sin because of their guilt, what did they do? Well, Eve said, well, God, you know, you allowed the serpent to come into the garden and he deceived me, confused me. And that's why I sinned.

And Adam was even worse. He said, well, it was the woman you gave me. You know, and that's what we do.

Instead of handling guilt by acknowledging it, we don't. 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.

Last week, I started a series that I call open heart surgery. And the reason for it is, is that almost all of our problems, almost all of them begin in our heart. That's our problem. We always think it's external, but it's not necessarily external. It's usually internal and in our heart. The reason is that we have, even though we are new creatures in Christ, we still have a hardened heart of our flesh. And it has a different approach to our faith than what it ought to have. For example, we don't see life the way God sees it. We see life externally.

Almost everything we talk about are external things. Remember God said, he said, I don't look at man the way you look at him. I look at his heart. You see, what's really happening in a person's heart is all that really matters to God.

And if you remember last week, I even said, look, it really doesn't matter whether you sing poorly or well. God doesn't care. It means nothing to him. But he does care about us. What's your heart?

Are you focused on him or not focused on him? You see, is your motivation of your worship pure? Secondly, we underestimate the destructive power of our heart. Jeremiah said that our heart is deceitful above all things. That's an amazing statement.

And he said it's desperately sick. We don't we don't see it that way. We see ourselves as generally just fine people with fine hearts. But our heart can be really deceitful. And thirdly, the words of Jesus out of our hearts come all of our actions and our attitudes. And so what I wanted to talk about was that God wants to do open heart surgery on us. And that's what Hebrews Chapter four tells us. The word of God is alive, powerful, sharper than any two edged sword, piercing asunder the soul, the sukkah and the spirit. God's word does surgery on our heart. And so what I want to talk about today is one aspect of our lives that comes from our heart. And all of us need to hear what God has to say about it.

Some of us more so than others. I want to deal with the word guilt. Anybody in here ever felt guilty? No, guilt.

It's as old as mankind. What did Adam and Eve do right after they sinned? What was the response? They hid themselves. Why did they hide themselves? They felt guilty.

So we'll hide. And then God comes in the garden. Adam, where are you?

You know that story. And then you'll notice what they did when God asked them to acknowledge their sin. Because of their guilt, what did they do? Well, Eve said, well, God, you know, you allowed the serpent to come into the garden and he deceived me, confused me. And that's why I sinned.

And Adam was even worse. He said, well, it was the woman you gave me. You know, and that's what we do. Instead of handling guilt by acknowledging it, we don't. We find a way of kind of excusing it if we possibly can.

And so today, that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about true guilt, not false guilt, but true guilt. You've done something wrong and you feel guilty.

And you should. There's nothing wrong with feeling guilty for a short time. The real question is, how do we deal with it? Some of you have probably dealt with it by just stuffing it. You feel guilty about something and you just stuff it.

You keep it inside. The problem with it is wherever you go, there it is. Some of you so much that you can carry guilt through your whole life. And that ends up becoming a way of defining you. You start seeing yourself as this guilty person who did this terrible thing. And you allow it to define you. Others of us, we sort of just make a false narrative up about things we do.

If you ever had teenagers, I know all of you were teenagers, but if you've ever had teenagers, what do teenagers do? Well, I wasn't the only one that did it. All the guys did it. Wow. You know that. I mean, you've used it. We've used it in lots of different ways.

Some of us use other extenuating circumstances. Well, I was only 20. That's why I was only 20. I really didn't know good for me.

I didn't know that. That's why we rationalize our own sin. And we do it because we feel guilty, but we don't want to deal with our guilt. That's what happens. So guilt can become an unsurmountable problem.

I mean, just think about it. You can undo it. Have you ever done something really terrible and really terrible to someone or said something really terrible? You can't undo it. You can't unsay it.

It's done. And so we know we've hurt others and we know we've taken something from someone. When you sin against a person, you take something from them. You take their trust from them. You could take their self-esteem from you.

You could take their time from. There's something you take from somebody. And once you feel guilty, whether you know it or not, you start having a debt debtor relationship with someone. You feel that you owe someone. You've having ever said that? I owe him or her an apology. I owe it. It's an interesting way of putting it.

That's the way this works. Or how about this? How can I make it up? How can I make this up?

Some of us are pretty superficial with this. You break somebody's heart. You cause them enormous pain. And then sort of flippantly, you say, I'm sorry. Let's move on.

Is that easy to do? I don't think so. At least all the people who come to me in marriage counseling don't seem to think so. And usually you hear one of them say, but I said I was sorry. And I say, well, how does that make you feel?

Not that good. I still got a lot of pain I'm trying to deal with. So this whole idea of how we handle guilt becomes a very, very important thing. Even if you say I'm seeking restitution, how easy is that? You see, how do you give someone restitution? How do you be married for 15, 20 years and then one of them betrays the marriage?

And they still want to make their marriage work. And you say, well, how can I make it up? Is it easy to make that up?

No, it's not easy to give restitution for that. That's hard for us when we're dealing with something like guilt. And so God says, look, I'd like to do some open heart surgery.

I want to define guilt for you and give you a little bit better biblical perspective of guilt. I want to begin in the Book of Romans, chapter two in verse 14. Romans 2.14. It's interesting what Paul writes here.

And just follow it, it might seem a little bit confusing to you, but it shouldn't. He says, for when Gentiles who do not have the law, like the Jews do, do instinctively the things of the law, those not having the law are a lot of themselves. The next verse will make it clear. He said, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts.

Now notice, it's the heart issue again, written in their hearts. Their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts, alternately accusing or else defending them. Well, what happens when your thoughts accuse you? What are you feeling when your thoughts accuse you?

Guilt. That's why your thoughts accuse you. Notice, it's not followers of Christ he's talking about. It's not Jewish people he's talking about.

He said the Gentiles. In other words, I could say this, guilt is part of God's gift as man's moral compass. Guilt is a gift from God. In other words, when you sin, you feel guilt. And that's okay.

He said even the Gentiles feel the same way. That's just the way this works. And it's a general thing, but it can be sometimes changed. For example, if your heart gets hard enough toward God, you can become what modern society, our society calls a sociopath. You ever heard that term?

Yeah. What's unusual about a sociopath? They feel no guilt. And almost always mass murderers, people like that, they feel no guilt.

You can just tell when they don't feel it. They're harder to become that hard that they can't feel guilt. But by and large, most of us feel guilt. And the question is, okay, I know God has a remedy for sin. Does he have a remedy for guilt?

Yes, he does. I'll show you it's the same remedy. Come back with me to Genesis chapter 3, Genesis chapter 3 and verse 21. This is after the fall. He's about to turn them loose out of the garden. And in verse 21, Moses writes this, he said the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and he clothed them. So he put some clothes on them before they went out. He made garments of what? Skin.

What's that mean? Something died. He killed something. And he covered them with it.

Wow. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. So if anything is going to look like a sin bearers, it's going to die.

That's what God said. And from there on in the Old Testament, hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of sheep, goats, bullocks died. Over and over and over again died. Whenever you're sinned you went to the priest, he made a sacrifice and what happened? Something died.

There's all this dying going on. But when you get to the New Testament in John chapter 1 verse 29, John the Baptist is doing his ministry and Jesus comes to be baptized by him. And John says, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. All the animals who ever died before Christ never took away sin.

They just covered it. That's what the writer of the New Testament says, they only covered the sin, but they never took it away. But the Lamb of God came and died and he took away the sin. That's what John the Baptist says here.

That's the way this thing worked. I'm going to say this morning, but he not only took away your sin, but he takes away your guilt. And that's a very important part of this. Go with me to Hebrews chapter 9 and he'll explain this a little bit clearer. I'll begin in verse 11. Hebrews 9 and verse 11. Here the writer of Hebrews says, but when Christ appeared as high priest of the good things to come, he entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say not of this creation, and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood. He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained the eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled set them apart or sanctify them for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God.

And then he says this, cleanse your what? Conscience. Where does guilt start?

Conscience. He not only died for your sins, he cleanses, that death cleanses your conscience from dead works to the living God. He said for this reason he's the mediator of a new covenant. Verse 16, for where a covenant is there must of necessity be death of one who made it. Jesus died not only to cover our sins, not only for our sins to be forgiven, but to clean our conscience.

That's a very important part. Now because of my old heart, my conscience will betray me. And so what ends up happening is we constantly and inappropriately will handle the guilt of our sin. As I said earlier, we should feel guilty when we sin, but we should not stay in guilt at all. And yet we do. We start identifying ourselves through the guilt. And by the way, we even react to other people who have sinned against us and we want them, whether we want to admit it or not, we want them to stay in guilt for the rest of their lives because of what they did to us.

It's not true. Jesus died to cleanse your conscience. That's what he says.

That's the way this whole thing worked. Wow. Next place I want to look is Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8.

This is a great chapter. Christians, if there's one chapter in Romans that most Christians I know finally when they read it enough want to hold on to, it's Romans 7. You see, because Romans 7, Paul talks about his sin and how disappointing he is.

And we all identify with that. You know, and you'll use it to someone, you'll say, well, look, look, you may say what I did was sinful and hurtful, but Paul sinned all the time. It says right there in Romans 7, he's a sinner.

Well, yes, but maybe not in the way you think. Look what Paul says in verse 14. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold in bondage to sin.

I know that. He said, for what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I am not, practicing what I would like to do. But I'm doing the very thing I hate. For if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For the willingness present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do. But I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin that dwells in me. I find, then, the principle that evil was present in me, the one who wants to do good. I joyfully concur with the law of God and my inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin, which is in my members. Conclusion, wretched man that I am.

Who's going to set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, he said, on the one hand, I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but, he said, on the other, with my flesh the law of sin. Paul says here what all of us know. Even though you became a Christian and your sins were forgiven, how many?

All of them, everything in the past, everything in the present, everything in the future. But Paul said, but sin remains in me. My sins are forgiven, but sin remains. And he said, and I find, and by the way, when Paul's talking about this, he's talking about something a little different than you might think. Paul was saying that I have moments that I don't do what I know I should be doing, and I end up doing things I shouldn't.

Now, let me rest your mind. I don't think he's committing adultery, murdering people, robbing banks. I don't believe that. I don't think that's what Paul's talking about at all. He's talking about what he knows to be sin. So, I've heard people want to use Paul's sin all the time. In one sense, but not in a way you want to use it, it's different. I can illustrate this.

I've done it many times in the past. Many years ago here, we brought a man named Alden Gannett, who was the president of Southeastern Bible College, and he preached on 1 John 1-9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He preached that verse. So, he's standing up here at the pulpit, and he said, and this very morning, he was staying at a house of a couple in Lakeview. He said, this very morning while I was in my device, I sinned, and I had to use 1 John 1-9. Now, all the people are like, hmm?

You know, they go, hey, hey, hey, hey, this is something. And I was sitting right over there with my wife, and he said, as I was reading the Bible, my mind wondered, and I immediately confessed that it was sin to God. And everyone over here went and looked at me like, that's sin? That's sin? Yeah, for him it is.

He's a godly man. That's sin. That's what Paul's talking about.

He's not usually talking about the stuff we're talking about when we talk about sin in our lives. He said, and I know I shouldn't be doing that. And he says, oh wretched man that I am.

How am I going to be delivered from this? And then he gives us the answer. He says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. That's why I'm delivered.

But then he says something even better. Chapter 8, verse 1. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Not only are my sins forgiven, but there's no condemnation.

Let me put it this way. There's no guilt. You see, what does guilt do to you? Condemns you. That's what guilt does. You see, guilt.

I'm guilty. I've been condemned. He said, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I mean, I think that's just an amazing thing when you think about it. Christ died not only for your sins. He died for your guilt. There's no condemnation.

I don't have to be condemned, he says. And it's an interesting thing when you think about it because often in the context here there's a lot of accusing. Whenever you sin or disappoint, you accuse yourself. We have an enemy. He's called Lucifer. And he is also called the accuser.

And so you can end up finding yourself in a battle all the time when he keeps saying, you're not worthy. You're guilty. You're not really a follower. You're guilty. Who you really are is a person who's guilty.

He says, I don't have to worry about that. There's no condemnation for me. Remember, the book of Hebrews spells it all out. Not only did Christ die as the sacrifice, but he's our high priest. And it says that he intercedes for us. So every time Satan, the accuser, accuses you before the throne of God, what does Jesus do? Shows God the Father in his hands and said, paid for him.

Well, this is what they're like, ah, paid for him. He intercedes for us. In other words, every single sin you could be accused of has already been paid for.

So there's no condemnation that goes along with your sin, or there shouldn't be. 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.

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