It's Not All Your Fault – Part 2 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. When you bear shame for something you did not do, the shame is there nonetheless. Thankfully, the Bible gives us a way to be free of guilt we did not cause. Today, more about maintaining a clear conscience amid circumstances that we could not have controlled.

From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, why do any of us feel shame for things we did not do? You know, Dave, there may be several reasons for that. One is sometimes children are blamed for things that their parents have done. They are blamed, they are shamed. And because of the power of parents over their children, the child begins to absorb all that guilt, false guilt, but guilt nonetheless. On the other hand, sometimes guilt is like a contagion.

If you live, for example, within a family where there are lots of secrets, lots of abuse, you begin to feel the weight of all that and your conscience bothers you. That's why I think it's so important for us to understand these things. My desire is that all who are listening to these messages will experience a sense of deliverance and they will see that there is a way out of guilt, whether they are responsible for their guilt or whether or not others are responsible for their guilt.

What we need to do is to listen carefully. And by the way, at the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info for a book I've written entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience. Now, what does God have to say about all this? There are two passages I want you to turn to very briefly. One is found in the book of Isaiah, Isaiah chapter 61. Isaiah chapter 61.

You'll notice that God here is speaking to Israel, and I understand that this application goes to Israel first. But I think that this is what God does for his people, even in this age. You remember that Tamar put ashes on her head. It was a sign of her humiliation. It was a sign of her helplessness. And she felt herself locked into that lifestyle.

So she lived desolate for the rest of her life. But notice what God says in verse three, and this follows the words of Jesus. Most of these words were recited when he was in the synagogue about the Spirit of the Lord being upon him to anoint him. And then it says, verse three, to grant to those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes. God says the shame of the ashes can be taken away. And you have a beautiful, beautiful garland to wear, which is really what the Hebrew text means. The oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

Want to see yourself here? Think about you being in that state of shame. And God says, you don't have to bear that because I'm covering it. I am giving you a garment, a beautiful garment, and goes on to say, but you shall be called priests of the Lord, verse six, they shall speak of you as ministers of our God. Verse seven, instead of your shame, there shall be a double portion. Instead of dishonor, they shall rejoice in their lot.

There you are. The shame is taken away. And then you'll notice in verse 10, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation.

Let me simply encourage you by saying this, that God in his mercy and grace knows your need. He knows the part that you played in your shame and in your guilt, which would be objective shame and guilt. And he also knows the part that other people have played.

And he knows that it's not all your fault. And today, no matter what the purpose or rather the source of your life, the purpose or rather the source of that shame and guilt may be, I want to encourage you to see God bigger than that. I want you to understand that in his grace and in his mercy, he can meet you in your need so that you would have a pure conscience and a sincere faith. I want you to take your Bibles and turn to one other passage today, and that is found in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 12, where the scripture says these words. Chapter 12, verse one. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.

And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. What the writer of Hebrews is saying is that when Jesus died on the cross, he scorned the shame connected with a cross. As he was hanging there, he knew that it was a shameful experience. He knew, in fact, that he was being cursed because cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. But just like he was bearing our guilt, he was also bearing our shame. He was bringing about a deliverance that would go down into our hearts so that we would be free and say we no longer need to carry this. I was speaking to a woman recently who was telling me how that even here in church, she walked around with this heavy weight of shame that she could not see herself as a worthy person. She could not see herself as a daughter of God. And then as God began to lift the shame, as he began to realize that she can walk around, and I encourage her to do that, as indeed someone who has value, someone for whom shame is not the last word.

And that can happen to you as well. You'll notice that Jesus Christ bore it. Rodney Clapp some time ago wrote these words speaking about this passage. He says, Does shame bind us?

Jesus was bound. Does shame destroy our reputation? Well, he is despised and rejected of men. Does shame reduce us to silence? He is led as a lamb to the slaughter and a sheep before her shearers is silent.

So he opened not his mouth. Does shame expose our apparent weaknesses? He saved others.

The crowd mocked. Himself, he cannot save. Does shame lead to abandonment? Well, you think of the words of Jesus Christ on the cross. My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Does shame diminish us? He was crucified naked, exposed for gawkers to see. He bore our sins.

He bore our iniquities. He bore the weight of our guilt and the weight of our shame. So I would say that the first thing that we have to understand as the bottom line is simply this, that shame loses its power in the presence of the cross.

And I would like to encourage you, and I know that this is difficult to do, you know, in a congregation where everyone is present. What you should do is to get alone with the Lord and claim the fact that shame no longer has to bind you. It no longer has to debilitate you, whether that's justified shame because of your sin or someone else's sin.

The fact is that the Lord is with us to help us and give us the sense of dignity and self-worth that he created us to be. Of course, in the process, what you're going to have to do is to forgive those who have done wrong against you. And remember this, that when you forgive, you not only are blessing these people with the blessing that the Lord has given to you, namely the gift of forgiveness, but also you are releasing them to God. Perhaps your parents are dead and you say, well, I can't connect with them anymore. I can't be reconciled to them.

That's true. But there comes a time when you submit your anger and your shame and your resentment and you give that to God. There was a woman who was in one state and she took a train to another state where her mother was buried to stand there at her grave and simply let it all spill out. Her mother actually was a prostitute. So here's this young woman getting rid of all this, standing there saying, God, I give this to you. I can't bear it anymore. And she need not bear it.

It wasn't even hers. It was imposed upon her and to stand there so that she can walk away a free woman. So the first thing that's very important is to come to the cross and to receive the forgiveness of God for our guilt and also the covering and the help and the deliverance from our shame. And I want to say this, that if God doesn't totally deliver you, if you still struggle afterwards, you should not feel guilty about that.

God uses all kinds of people who are still struggling with these issues. But you and I must be willing to see God as greater than whatever may be going on within our hearts. So first of all, shame loses its power at the foot of the cross. And secondly, our self-worth, our self-worth is not based on how we feel. Your self-worth is not based on how you feel. It is really based on who you are in Jesus Christ, if you've received him as your savior. It is based on the work that he has done and who he calls you to be, a son or a daughter of the most high. And you and I must know that our feelings and all of the things that have happened to us oftentimes distract us from that. But God wants you to be free to serve him with joy.

The goal of our instruction is love that flows from a good conscience and a pure heart. I want you to visualize for a moment that I had up here a silver dollar. I don't, but we've all seen silver dollars. Now let's suppose you're walking along and you see this little thing glimmer in the mud and you find out what it is and it's a silver dollar. The silver dollar is all muddy. And you look at it and you think to yourself, how can this thing possibly have value? But you and I know that if you take that silver dollar and you wash it, it has just as much value as a newly minted silver dollar that you might find in Washington one of these days because its value was not diminished by where it was found or its dirt. And I say to you today that whether it is because you threw the silver dollar into the mud or somebody pushed you into the mud, either way, God's wonder and God's grace can rescue you if you're willing to come to him and to receive the gift of eternal life and the gift of forgiveness that he gives to all those who come to him.

You don't need to be a victim of shame. God can set you free today. A number of years ago I had a friend who committed adultery as a horrible situation.

I mean, he lost his wife, of course, in the sense that they were divorced and set his kids off on a bad trajectory. Those are messes that you can't clean up. But yet at the same time, he loved God and he so sought God's forgiveness amid the mess.

And that's what we have to do. David, after the great mess that he made, he says, Lord, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. He said, I can rejoice in God again.

I can't clean up the mess. All of my tears cannot bring back Uriah back to life. All of my tears cannot restore the purity of Bathsheba. But if God comes and takes all that shame and guilt away, my joy can actually be restored. David could live again with a good conscience, if you can imagine it.

And that's where some of you may be at. But I remember riding with my friend in a car and he was weeping even though it was years afterwards. He was reliving the mess that he made. But he had in his car a CD by Dave Boyer. Dave Boyer sang here at the Moody Church a couple of years ago and his signature song is Calvary Covers It All.

And instead of the word stain, which is in the song, I'm going to substitute the word shame and see if I remember the words. Calvary covers it all. My past with its sin sin and shame. My guilt and despair, Jesus took on him there.

And Calvary covers it all. And even in the midst of brokenness and relationships that cannot be put back together, here was a man who found his joy in God because God says, I will make you clean and I will deliver you from that bad conscience. Today, God is saying that to you. And some of you have never trusted Christ as Savior, by the way. This message is a little odd because you have struggled with shame. You've struggled with guilt.

And some of you may be running and not knowing exactly where to go and what to do with this message. If your confidence is not in Jesus today, I invite you to do that because his death on the cross was a sacrifice for such as sinners. And you know what he did? He anticipated your sin, your mess, your dysfunction, your guilt, and your shame.

He anticipated it all. And Jesus said that when I died, I despised, I scorned the shame and said, I'll bear yours if you believe on me. Let's pray together. Father, I pray that you might take this message and I pray that it may be applied to whomever needs it, which really is probably all of us. I pray, Father, that within the community of God's people, we might hear at the Moody Church have safe places in our small groups, in our TMC communities where people can come and they can be honest and they know that they are not going to be judged, that they're not going to be despised because all of us are broken in one way or another. Make us, Father, as a church, a healing community where knowing that shame cannot ultimately destroy us. We can be honest about our relationships and where we are at and we shall be accepted and received and prayed for.

Grant that, O Lord. And now before I close this prayer, I wonder what you need to say to God today. What did God say to you? You talk to God about whatever it is that God has talked to you about. And if you've never believed on Christ, even while you are listening to this, you can say, Jesus, I'm a sinner and I receive you as my personal Savior.

For as many as received him, to them he gives the authority to become the children of God, even to those who believe on his name. Today, Father, I believe on you. Let's just have a moment of quietness while you talk to God. Father, I want to claim the promise from the book of Psalms that he binds up our wounds. And we pray today, Lord, that whatever wounds we may have because of the sin of others and our own, help us to know that you bind them up and you want to restore us so that we can know that we belong to you with a sense of dignity, that we are daughters and sons of the most high God. Bring deliverance to your people. Whatever it is that you are saying to us, Lord, grant us the ability to do and help us to remember that there's power in the cross. We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. You know, in the book entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience, I tell the story of someone who was on drugs. And a counselor asked him, why do you take drugs?

He said, you should know the answer to that question. I feel so bad about the things that I have done that I can't live with myself. And so I take drugs to dull the pain. Our hearts go out to people who are struggling with that kind of guilt. But I want you to know that there is someone who can actually take your guilt away and not simply try to cover it.

That, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ. I've written the book entitled The Power of a Clear Conscience because I want to help people to understand that they do not need to live with a guilt that has been imposed upon them by others or guilt that has come about because of their own failures. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy because I'm going to be giving you some contact info. I believe very deeply that this resource is going to help you run all the way to the finish line, so to speak.

Here's what you do. Go to RTWOffer.com. RTWOffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 for a gift of any amount. We're making this book available for you.

Once again, that contact info RTWOffer.com or you can call us at 1-888-218-9337. Here at Running to Win, we are deeply committed to Jesus Christ who we believe is able to deliver people from their past no matter how evil it was. It's time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Can we achieve sinless perfection in this life?

Mary lives in Madison, Illinois, and here is Running to Win on WMBI. Here's her question. How can we be both sinners and saints? I heard you say on the radio that we sin every day.

I don't believe that's true. If we make Christ the Lord of our lives, how can we still sin? Your question is excellent, but let's take a deep breath and think about this because it is so important. The question is, can we still sin as believers? The answer is yes. You asked the question, if we make Christ Lord of our lives, how can we still sin?

Well, my dear friend, we do. The fact is that we are redeemed, we belong to God, but we still have the sin nature. In fact, if you want to read Romans chapter 7, I think the apostle Paul's struggle there, where he talks about that which he would like to do, that he doesn't have the power to do, and so forth, I think he's talking about himself as a believer. So I have to ask you very honestly, have you not sinned since you've come to know Christ as Savior?

I sometimes say when I meet people who say they haven't sinned, if I meet a man who says, I've never sinned, I always want to ask his wife as to whether or not she agrees. So we can sin. And when I made the statement that we are both sinners and saints, and by the way, the person who made that statement was Martin Luther, because what Luther was saying was this, that when we receive Christ as Savior, we are credited with a righteousness of Christ. In that sense, we are saints.

We meet all of God's requirements because Jesus meets those requirements for us. So we are saints. But at the same time, we still struggle with sin. You know, when James makes the remark, purify your hands ye sinners, I think that's in chapter 4, if I remember correctly.

I think he's talking about Christians. So at the end of the day, I do believe that we are both saints and sinners. Should we continue in sin, that grace may abound, God forbid. And if we persist in our sin, without a sense of conviction, without fighting it, it may well be that we've never really believed on Christ.

I hope that this helps. God bless you, and I hope that all of us will be victorious in our struggles with sin. You can write to us at Running to Win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. It's tough to live or work with someone whose conscience is dead or defiled. How do we cope with people who seem to be beyond hope? Next time on Running to Win, a look at narcissists, people with hardened consciences. Thanks for listening. This is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.