Bearing the Greatest Burden - Part 1

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Christ accomplished miraculous things through His death and resurrection.

Discover how His work can transform your life right now. Here's part one of Bearing the Greatest Burden. What is the heaviest burden that you've ever borne in your life? Now, most of you'd have to stop and think about that for a few moments, but some of you could think immediately I remember exactly what it was.

It can be one of a number of things. You had the greatest opportunity in your life. You made the wrong decision and you missed it. You had an automobile accident. Your best friend got killed.

You can't ever get over it. It was a time when you had lots of wealth. You lost it all because you gambled it away. And then God called you to preach the gospel to serve Him in some fashion. And you decided and said no, and have been happy ever since. And you got to make the right decision. You got to become a more powerful person. You got to become a more powerful person.

Wonderfully married, lovely family, lovely children. You walked away because you thought there was something better. And now you don't have either one. So, I want you to turn, if you will, to the ninth chapter of Hebrews. And I want us to read the twenty-fourth through the twenty-eighth verses of this chapter. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but unto heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor was it that He would offer Himself often as the high priest enters the holy place, year by year with blood that is not His own," which is what their, it was their responsibility in those days. Verse twenty-six, otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the consummation of the ages, He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

And inasmuch as it appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin to those who eagerly await Him. What is the greatest burden of all? The greatest burden of all is not any of these things that we mentioned, though that's a great burden. The greatest burden of all has to do with our sin. And all of us have experienced sin in our life, so all of us have had to bear the burden of sin. And so, as you think about your life and what's been going on and how far you are along in life, maybe you had dreams and ideas and you had maybe some kind of dreams in your life that you thought could never happen, and now they're moving right along and somehow you seemingly are doing that without God and everything seems to be just fine. What a deception, because you see, the truth is every single one of us have to give an account to God, very evident from the Scripture that we do.

And so, what we do is we just move along in deception, thinking everything is going along really well. So, I want you to think about this passage of Scripture, because in this passage of Scripture is the most important truth in all the Word of God, no matter where you go. Now, what is the greatest burden?

Here it is. The greatest burden that mankind bears is simply this. It's the sin and the consequences of that sin in our life, that's the greatest burden of all. And while a person may not feel that, because we said, what is a burden? A burden is a weight. It's an emotional weight. It can sometimes become weariness, discouragement, despair in a person's life.

But it's that heaviness of soul and spirit. Many people are bearing that burden, do not realize what it is. And so, therefore, because they don't know what it is, they go about in the wrong way trying to alleviate that burden, that feeling of despair, a weariness of failure and so forth, and they get themselves in deeper trouble. Sin is a very deceptive burden. And while a person on the outside may appear to be doing well, deep down inside, the very nature of guilt and sin is that it's inescapable. And people go to all kinds of means and ways of trying to escape it, but they cannot. And they deny it, they rationalize it, they try to excuse it, they're going to blame their feelings on someone else, and sometimes what they do is they blame their spiritual feelings on something that is physical, that is, they say, Well, this is a physical thing.

Well, I'm just going through a time in my life. The very presence and the very essence and the very character of sin and guilt is destructive. It wears away at your body, it wears away at your soul, it wears away at your mind, fragments your thinking. And no matter what the person may do, it may be all the prominence and prestige that the world can offer, it may be alcohol, sex, drugs, whatever it may be, you cannot escape the burden of sin and its consequences.

And many people who say, I don't believe any of that, when they lie down at night and look up in the night and it's just themselves, they somehow deep down inside know that there's something beyond what they're willing to admit. So, what are these consequences? I want you to think about it for a moment and think about how to think about how heavy this has to weigh. And the first is this, is the bondage of sin. I want to name four. Four consequences of living without Christ.

Here they are. First of all, living in bondage. If a person says, Well, I'm not in bondage. Ask any, most any alcoholic or most any person who is addicted to drugs or sex. And if you ask them, Are you in bondage?

Well, certainly not. I can stop this anytime I want to. That's why all of these rehabilitation places are so much more than you're living in. And so, I have to remind you of a couple of people who said they weren't in bondage until they get absolutely so desperate, then they have to finally confess that something's not right in their life. And so, one of the burdens of the consequences of sin is bondage. A second one is this, not only is there bondage, but there's this whole issue in a person's life that oftentimes we don't sin separates us from God.

There isn't anything in this life worth making me feel separated from Him. Now, while I know that once you're saved, you're not ever separated, but a lost person is separated from God. And so, the very idea of being separated from God, and the Scripture's very clear. There are lots of verses we could turn to, for example, when the Scripture talks about our sin has separated us from God. And when you think about being separated from Him, if a person is not spiritually minded, that doesn't faze them. But if you are a believer, you desire the will of God in your life, and you're trying to walk a godly life. When sin enters your life as a Christian, if you can stand it and it doesn't bother you, you need to stop and ask yourself the question, am I really saved? God hates it.

God hates every form of sin, and here's the reason He does. Because He sees what it does to His children. Look at what's happening to millions and millions of people who are misled, believe all kinds of error, living in all kinds of bondage in their life. They don't understand what in the world's going on, but they're not happy, they're not successful.

It takes more than money and pleasure and prestige and promise to make a person successful. And so, what happens? They're living separated from God. And you see, a person who is without Christ is separated from God because that's what sin does.

And all the denial in the world does not change that. Sin is a separator. It separates families.

It separates friends. But sin, most of all, separates us from God. And for example, when you turn to Ephesians, look in Ephesians chapter two for a moment and notice what Paul said about this whole idea of sin and how it affects our life.

He says in chapter two, verse one, you were dead in your trespasses and sins. That is, that's what sin does. It deadens us to the things of God.

That's why when a person is saved with the grace of God, what happens? We're transformed. Salvation brings us into a relationship with God. Our spirit comes alive. Now we can talk to Him and relate to Him and have a relationship with Him. He says, in which dead in trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked, according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among them we too all formerly lived in the lust of the flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh in the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.

There's two things I want you to notice. Sin is a separator. Absolutely your spirit cannot relate to God, and by that spirit is made alive by the Holy Spirit. And that's what God says. He says, in which dead in trespasses and sins, in which dead in trespasses and sins, dead in trespasses and sins.

And notice this, notice what He says. He says not only that, but He says, by nature the children of wrath, even as the rest. Now what's the wrath of God?

Because this is the third. Look, first of all, there's the bondage of sin, separation from God, and there's the wrath of God. If you said to one of your lost friends, do you realize you're living under the wrath of God? I don't believe that part about wrath. What I do is I live with the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.

Let me tell you something. There are no two passages of Scripture in the Bible more condemning the way people live than those two passages. And they say, well, that's the two I believe. Then you just condemned yourself.

Listen to what He says, for example. In John chapter three, we all love John three sixteen, for God so loved the world, gave His only begotten Son. Whosoever believes in Him, have eternal life and never perish. We love those verses, and I too love them, and I too believe that one of the most awesome, awesome, awesome beliefs in the Bible, ideas of the Scripture, principles of the Word of God is His unconditional love for us.

But if I reject it, also there's a principle that says, whatever I sow, I reap what I sow, more than I sow, later than I sow. Listen to John chapter three, verse thirty-six, after Jesus has talked to Nicodemus and now He's coming down to the end. Listen to what He says, verse thirty-six, He who believes in the Son has eternal life.

He who does not obey the Son, which is meaning to believe in Him, will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on Him. Now, here is the condition of a lost person. Here's the burden a lost person's dealing with. They're in bondage to sin. We say, well, I'm not a sex addict, I don't, I'm not into alcohol, I'm not into drugs, I'm not, all of this kind of thing. What do you, what do you mean, I'm in bondage? You can be in bondage to pride.

You can be in bondage to what you're seeking in life if it's just a So, bondage is one thing. Separation from God. For example, somebody says, well, but I'm not a Christian, but I can pray and God hears my prayers. No, He doesn't. Well, how can you be so prideful and egotistical and arrogant to tell me that God doesn't answer my prayer?

I'm not being either one of those three things. I'm just telling you what God says. He will not hear the prayers of the wicked unless the prayer of the wicked is a prayer of confession and repentance toward God.

Why? This is the thing the world doesn't want to understand. That sin by its nature separates me from a holy God who says He hates sin. He does not hate the sinner. He hates sin, hates everything about sin because it destroys so much. And it destroys His children.

That's why He hates it. And so the wrath of God is the wrath of the sinner. And so the wrath of God is God's hatred and anger and animosity, listen, toward those things that are ungodly. Does He hate the sinners? Yes.

Does He love us at the same time? Yes. If you're saved by the grace of God and you're sinned against Him, are you lost?

No. Eternal salvation does not rest upon my conduct. Eternal salvation rests upon our relationship with Almighty God through His Son, Jesus Christ. I'm not saved by His grace and goodness and love and mercy and kindness. I'm not saved by them and kept by myself. We're to live a righteous life and a holy life before Him. But we don't keep saved by our conduct. Here's the burden.

The burden of the bondage of sin, our separation from God. Listen to what He says in this passage. He says, but the wrath of God abides on this person who does not believe in Jesus.

That means hovering over them. Is God's judging hand? Is it because He wants to know? Is it because He desires that know? Is it because He likes that know?

Is it because He takes pleasure in that know? It is because, listen, the threat of the judgment of God should lead people to repentance. And also the Bible says the kindness of God leads people to repentance. But there's one other part of this burden, and that's simply this, that is eternal death. In Revelation chapter twenty, he talks about the second death. And the second death is eternal death. We die physically, but if a person dies spiritually, forever, it is the second death. And he says, those who die the second death are cast into the lake of fire. Somebody says, I don't believe in any of that hell stuff.

Let me just say this. You may not believe it, that does not change it. You may not believe in God, that does not eradicate God. We're living in a day, and I picked up this magazine, and I picked up this magazine and just reading the letters, responding to an article in the magazine a few months ago, and people writing their editorial letters in what they thought, it was very interesting to me that you could tell where people were coming from. Some of them were very, very belligerent because the very idea that Christians or some religious people could tell them how to live. Or even suggest that they, for example, were sinners or whatever it might be. It was just real interesting that you could just feel the kind of resistance and rebellion toward the whole Christian faith and not just the Christian faith, but other religions also. You're telling me how I ought to live.

You know what the issue is? People have their own idea of what God's like. They've already decided in their mind, this is the kind of God I'm going to serve. This is who I believe God is. When you say, well, what's the basis of that? Well, listen, when you decide who God is like and you put aside the Word of God, there is no way for you to ever come up to what He's like.

Why? Because the most wonderful things in the Word of God did not come from man. Man could not have written this book if, listen, he would not if he could have, and he could not if he would have. For the simple reason, the truth of the Word of God is so totally antagonistic against the world's ideas of God. They see Him as a God of judgment and a God of condemnation. They see Him as a God of love and goodness and mercy, and with that mercy must come justice. Because you see, here's how mixed up the world is. They want God to be all love, no condemnation, no judgment. Do you know what kind of world we'd live in?

Unsafe to go out of your house and unsafe in your house if all the doors were locked and you had an alarm system on. If there's no judgment, no condemnation of sin, God's all love, treats everybody just wonderfully well, no matter how they live, this is the issue with mankind. They don't want you to tell them about consequences.

Tell me about pleasure. Tell me about the goodness of God, but don't tell me about any consequences of my ungodly living because it makes me uncomfortable and I don't want to hear about it. And the deception is that people get along so well they don't think it's true. Until they're sick and on their deathbed, they've lost everything, the family's walked away. One of these burdens we had talked about in the very beginning, they don't want to.

I don't want to believe it. They'd just think about this, living in bondage to sin, separated from the very God who created you and for His purpose for your life, living under the wrath of God every single day of your life, and with your destined future to be eternally separated Him forever and ever and ever. That's what hell is all about. Whatever may be true of hell, eternal separation from God. Think about the God who created you, who's planned the very best as all wise God knows how to plan for you, and then you ignore Him in your life, reject Him in your life, and then to be eternally separated from Him.

Because in that moment of separation, you will know who He's like and what you've missed. That's what the judgment of the wicked's all about. When you and I stand before the judgment, God's not going to bring up all of our past sins and let's say now, let's see if the good outweighs the bad. That's not the judgment of God. When you and I come into the judgment throne, it's the judgment of rewards. God rewarding us for the good He's seen in our life, having accepted Him as our Savior. For the wicked in the great white throne judgment has nothing to do with salvation.

It has to do with the degree of punishment a person experiences for all eternity because they deliberately, willfully separated themselves from God. Now somebody says, what about those people who haven't heard and all this, that and the other? Well, let me just say this, one thing you can be sure of, God makes no mistakes. He knows everything. He's sovereign. He's not going to be unjust. God is not unjust.

He's absolutely just in all that He does. Thank you for listening to Bearing the Greatest Burden. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.