How to Grapple with Guilt - Life of Christ Part 97

Guilt. The feeling that you've done something wrong. The feeling that you're to blame for something bad happening. The feeling that you deserve to be punished because of it. You know, folks, guilt is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.

Parents often use it to get children to perform the way they want them to. Certain churches use guilt to motivate people to behave the way they want them to behave. People out in the work world use guilt all the time to try to manipulate people to get what they want. Now, there's one thing about guilt that's true, and that is that as a manipulative tool, guilt is very effective.

It works. But it's a misuse of guilt. It's a twisting of the real reason why God created guilt, and when we use it this way, we destroy other people's lives and we destroy our own. I want to talk to you about guilt today, and unless I miss my guess, there's probably a lot of us here this morning who are grappling with guilt in our lives, guilt over all kinds of different things.

And what we need to know is how to fight off that guilt, how to resolve that guilt in a way that keeps from destroying our lives. So let's talk about that, and we're going to use an example from the life of one of the most interesting and enigmatic characters in the Bible, a fellow named Judas Iscariot. In fact, it's kind of the last weird scene from his life, and it's in Matthew chapter 27, and I'd like you to open your Bible to Matthew chapter 27.

And if you're visiting with us and you didn't bring a Bible, I'd like to invite you to borrow our copy of the Bible, which is on the back of the seat in front of you. We're going to be on page 704 of our copy of the Bible, page 704, or Matthew chapter 27 in your copy. Now remember, Jesus was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. He's been on trial all night in front of the Jewish high council, the Sanhedrin, and as we pick up here in Matthew chapter 27, verse 1, it's morning and they've made a decision. Verse 1, early in the morning, all the chief priests and the elders of the people came to the decision to put Jesus to death.

Why? Because he had claimed to be the Messiah. He had claimed to be God himself in the flesh. And they bound him and led him away and handed him over to Pilate, the Roman governor. The reason they did that, friends, is because the Romans had taken away from the Jews the authority to carry out capital punishment. And so if they wanted to crucify someone, they had to go get the Romans okay, so they take Jesus to the Roman governor. Verse 3, and when Judas, who had betrayed Jesus, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and he returned the 30 silver coins, the ones of course they had given him to betray Christ, to the chief priests and the elders.

I have sinned, he said, for I have betrayed innocent blood. What is that to us, they said? What do we care? That's your problem. That's your responsibility.

Don't bother us with that. And so Judas threw the money into the temple and left and he went away and he hanged himself. Isn't it interesting that Judas took his guilt back to these chief priests, back to these elders, back to the religious leaders of Israel and they didn't want to hear anything about it? Now Judas was their best buddy when he was betraying Jesus, but now all of a sudden that he was having a few pangs of conscience and all of a sudden now that he was second guessing whether they had done the right thing, man, they don't want anything to do with this guy. I found interesting what Matthew Henry, the great commentator said. He said, people under conviction will usually find their old companions in sin to be miserable comforters. Isn't that true?

People, all they want is license to keep doing what they feel like doing and as soon as you start feeling that maybe it's not right to do it, they don't want anything to do with you. Well, finding no way to get rid of his guilt, that's what he was feeling was guilt, finding no way to get rid of that, Judas went and did the only thing he knew to do and that is he took his own life. He killed himself. Verse six, and the chief priests picked up the coins and said, well, you know, it's against the law to put this money back in the treasury because it's blood money, so they decided to use the money to buy a potter's field as the burial place for foreigners. And this is why this field has been called the field of blood to this day. Talk about the ultimate in hypocrisy.

I mean, do you get the picture here? Judas throws this money into the temple and these guys go, oh, we can't take this money and put it back in the treasury? This is tainted money. This is money that's dirty. If we took this money and we put it back in the treasury, oh, it would offend God to do this.

We can't do this. And yet these are the same people who are out here plotting to murder Jesus Christ. I mean, do we have a does not connect here? I mean, are we swallowing a camel and straining in a gnat here? Murder's okay, but putting money back in the treasury that came from Judas isn't? I mean, what kind of hypocrites do we have here? I'll tell you, in my opinion, these guys miss their true calling in life.

These guys should have been in Congress is how I see it, huh? Now, one more thing to notice here. Let's look at verse nine. Then that which was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled. And by the way, there are two prophecies folded into one here, one from Zechariah and one from Jeremiah. And if you want to know, you say, okay, see, the Bible's wrong.

No, it isn't. Matthew simply gave credit to the whole thing, to the major prophet instead of the minor prophet. That's all he did because he folds two prophecies into one.

And here they are. First, they took 30 silver coins, the price set on him by the people of Israel. And second, they used them to buy the potter's field as the Lord had commanded me. Now, these prophecies are over 600 years old, and they're so precise that they even predicted the exact number of coins that would be given to Judas for betraying Jesus Christ.

My question to you is, friends, how could the Bible do that 600 years before it happened? You might say, lucky guess? No, not lucky guess.

You should be so lucky in guessing the stock market. No, it's not a lucky guess. This was God, an almighty God, a living God who knows the end from the beginning, simply writing about what he knew was going to happen and what he was going to make sure was going to happen, writing about it 600 years before he made it happen. And may I say to you that if you're here this morning and you've never trusted Christ in a real and personal way, and maybe you've got some doubts as to whether or not the Bible is reliable, and maybe you've got some doubts as to whether or not this whole Christianity thing is a hoax, I would like to submit to you one of the greatest proofs of the authenticity of the Bible is fulfilled prophecy. The fact that hundreds of years before things ever happened, the Bible writes about them with such incredible accuracy down to the number of silver coins that were involved that there is no way to explain it other than a living transcendent God who wrote the book. And if a living transcendent God wrote the book, then the book is trustworthy and we can base our eternal destiny on it. You know, there are over 30 prophecies surrounding the life of Jesus Christ that were predicted hundreds and in some cases even thousands of years before Jesus ever appeared in time and space. Do you know what the odds are mathematically of 30 prophecies all being right?

It's one with so many zeros behind the 10 you don't even want to know about it. How could that happen? Simply because there is a living God who wrote the book. And if you've had some doubts about whether or not when Jesus said, I'm the way the truth and the life, nobody comes to the Father except to me, whether that's too narrow, whether that's just simply not right, I would submit to you that the Bible defends its authenticity and its validity with fulfilled prophecy all over the place and that it's a trustworthy book and if Jesus said he's the only way to God, then folks, he's the only way to God. Something to think about. Well, now that's the end of our passage, but it leads us to ask the really important question. What's that question? So what? Right.

Lon, I'm not planning to hang myself and I haven't betrayed Jesus and so what difference does this make for me? You know, I go to Hume Lake every year to speak and it's out in the Sierras out in California and it's just gorgeous. 6,000 feet up, you know, just breathtaking.

And the relative humidity in August is about maybe 20 percent. It's glorious. I think about you guys every year when I'm there. Yeah, I do. But every year I used to go, this was a few years ago, there was one man who used to be there. He was a pilot, lived in Cincinnati, and he would come out every year with his family. And one year when I arrived, the people I asked about him and the people said, oh, there was a horrible tragedy. And I said, well, you know, what happened? And they said, well, he was driving out with his two sons.

They decided to drive out and they were coming across the desert in Arizona. And his son said, hey, dad, you know, why don't we pull over? It's late.

Let's get a motel, whatever. And he's just too macho to hear about it. And he said, no, no, no, you know, we're driving.

Oh, we're pressing on here. Anyway, they both fell asleep. He kept on driving. He fell asleep at the wheel.

Car went off the road. He survived. His two sons didn't. And, you know, when I saw him at Hume that year, the next year, the next year. I've never seen anybody so consumed with guilt as this man. And I tried to help him. I mean, I talked with him. We prayed together.

We'd have a cup of coffee together. You know, I wept with him. But, you know, no matter how hard I tried, every year it seemed like he was still losing the war. And one time he said to me, I'll never forget it, he said, Lon, I feel like I'm in a fight for my very soul. And right now, guilt is winning. Folks, guilt is a nasty enemy. It is a nasty enemy. It's a stiff opponent. It's like being in the ring with Mike Tyson.

And if you don't watch it, it will put you down. Now, the good news is that God has a way to deal with guilt that doesn't result in self-destruction, doesn't result in you go out and hang in yourself. And I want to talk to you about that this morning. So let's talk about guilt and how we're going to work through it so we don't go do what Judas did with guilt.

Now, what exactly is guilt? Let's start by asking that question. You ever played pinball? Have people played pinball? Well, you know what happens when you cheat on a pinball machine? You pick the thing up and try to get the ball to do stuff it's not supposed to do? Or you bang it too hard? You know what happens, don't you? What happens? Tilt. Right. There's big old light flashes on there. Tilt, tilt, tilt, tilt. The game goes dead.

You lose your 50 cents and it just ruins your whole afternoon. OK. Right. Well, what I'm trying to say to you is guilt is simply like a big tilt meter in your soul.

That's all it is. See, God has put inside of us a conscience that knows right from wrong. He says in Romans Chapter 2 that the reason that societies and cultures who've never seen the Ten Commandments, when you go to them, still say on their own without the Ten Commandments, it's wrong to murder, it's wrong to steal, it's wrong to lie, it's wrong to commit adultery, is because in their conscience is written the law of God. It's like a moral gyroscope that's supposed to keep them on track. And folks, when we go off course, that's what a gyroscope is all about, it's keeping us on course. When we go off course, God has built into us guilt and guilt is like a big old tilt meter that starts going off, going, hey, you're off course. Hey, you're headed for the ditch.

Hey, if you don't make some changes, you're going to self-destruct. That's all guilt is. It's a warning light that goes on in our soul.

A warning light. God did not give us guilt so that we could manipulate one another with it. God did not give us guilt so that we could beat ourselves up with it. God did not create guilt so that we could put ourselves in prison with it.

God created guilt as a way of saying, hey, you need some course correction here. This is not what's going to lead to the kind of happy, successful, fulfilling life that you're looking for. You're headed for the ditch. Wake up.

Tilt. That's all it is. Now, there's two kinds of guilt. There's real guilt and there's false guilt.

Let's talk about them. False guilt is guilt that we feel, but the facts don't support it. It's guilt that we feel, but it's not our fault. There's a divorce in the family and the children go around blaming themselves the rest of their lives. It was their fault.

If we'd only been more obedient, if we'd only been kinder, if we'd only been nicer, if we only hadn't pitted mom against dad so much, this wouldn't have happened. The divorce is all my fault. Is the divorce really all their fault?

No, it isn't. It had nothing to do with them, but they go around carrying that guilt. It's false guilt. How about if you're playing on an athletic team and you make a mistake and the team loses? You drop a fly ball, you miss a pass, you let a goal go by you, and the game's lost. Many of us have had the experience of walking off the field feeling like the reason the whole game was lost was because of us and our mistake, but that's not true.

We play as a team. If the team had played better, it wouldn't have been that close where your mistake would have made any difference anyway. But many of us have walked off of fields where people have tried to tell us that and we're sure it's our fault. False guilt. Sometimes when people have special needs children, parents blame themselves and they say, It's my fault. It's my fault if I'd have only done something different prenatally, if the delivery had only been different, if the early care had only been different. This is my fault that this child is this way. But it isn't. Sometimes we have children that grow up and they reject Jesus Christ and they go off and they follow the world's pattern. They're like the prodigal son and parents beat themselves up saying, If we'd only been more godly, if we'd only worked off, if we'd only read the Bible more, if we'd only gone to church more, this wouldn't have happened. You don't know that.

You can't control where people's wills go, even if they are your children. We've had friends that commit suicide. We said, Gosh, if I'd only called them more, if I'd only been there more, if I'd only reached out more, they wouldn't have happened. Yes, it would have.

It probably would have happened anyway. Now, how do we deal with false guilt? Because many of us are in a prison of false guilt that we put ourselves in.

Why? Because we feel pain and rather than dealing with the pain functionally, we deal with it dysfunctionally and we fall into self-pity and self-condemnation and lots of guilt that we don't deserve. How do we deal with it? Well, here's my suggestion. Find some friends you trust, find some godly people that you trust who aren't going to just kiss up to you but are going to tell you the truth and even though it's painful, share with them, talk with them about how you're feeling and why you feel that way and ask them the question, ask them to help you evaluate, is it really my fault?

If it is, tell me. And pick people you know who are honest enough that they'll tell you if it's your fault. But in so many cases, it's not. And if they say to you, this is not your fault, then the second step is we need to say, God, help me to believe the truth. Help me to get rid of the self-pity and get rid of the self-condemnation and walk out of this self-imposed prison that I've put myself in.

And it takes time to do this usually and many times we need friends to walk alongside of us and keep reminding us it is not your fault. The solution to false guilt is truth and some friends who love you enough to walk with you. But what about real guilt? I mean, is there real guilt in our world?

Now, the world system wants to say no. There's no such thing as real guilt. It's all something the church made up.

But that's not true. There is real guilt in the world. Guilt is not something the church made up, folks. Guilt is something that God invented and put inside the human psyche.

And he did it as a big tilt meter, as I said. And there are times when the tilt meter ought to be going off in our lives. Like that man who fell asleep at the wheel and killed his two sons because he was too macho and too proud to pull over and stay at a hotel. Is that real guilt or false guilt? That's real guilt. That's real guilt. He made a bad decision. He made a bad choice that resulted in some bad consequences in his life and other people's lives. That's real guilt.

What are some other examples? How about an alcoholic who ruins his family and loses them and loses his marriage because of his drinking problem and feels guilty about it? Is that real guilt? Yes. How about a girl who sleeps with her boyfriend and ends up pregnant over some STD, sexual transmitted disease, or worse, with AIDS? And she feels guilty. Is that real guilt?

Yes. A friend I know, I ran into this lady just the other day and I said, how's it going? And she said, it's going terrible. And I said, why? She said, I have to sell my house.

I said, why do you have to do that? She said, because my husband's gambling. She said, last year he lost $60,000 to his bookie in one year.

And she said, they're threatening his life and the only way we can pay it off is sell our house, take the equity out of our house and pay off his gambling debts. I said, well, how does he feel about this? She said, he is incredibly guilty. The guilt is eating him up. I said, what's he doing about it? She said, he's out gambling more.

I just ran into this lady last week. Is this real guilt? You bet. And real guilt will eat you for lunch if you don't know what to do with it. So let's talk about five steps to handle it real quick. Number one, I want you to turn back to Psalm 51.

It's page 405. I want to use David's life and show you the principles for dealing with. Remember David and he committed adultery with Bathsheba.

You remember this? The child died. I mean, there was some genuine real guilt here. And I want to show you how David processed this guilt so that he was able to go on being the king of Israel and go on living life.

Five quick steps. Number one, accept the responsibility for what you did. Look at Psalm 51, verse three.

For I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me against you and you only have I sinned, Lord, and done what is evil in your sight. This is a man who has accepted responsibility for what he did wrong. And that's where it has to start. If it doesn't start there, we're not going anywhere.

This is the absolute necessary first step. Nobody likes to admit that they're wrong. But if you're wrong, you were wrong.

And that's where you got to start. I read an article in the paper about Pete Rose and the name of the article was Why Pick on Pete? And here's what it says in the article. It says that Pete rose in his gambling. He bet on 10 to 20 college basketball games at a time. He lost four hundred thousand dollars in two months to one bookie. He went out begging for new bookies to take his IOUs in 1985, 86 and 87. He bet up to five thousand dollars on baseball games, including those played by his own team, the Cincinnati Reds. He bet for his team to lose.

And he was the manager. And the article says that the accusations come from runners who say they placed his bets and from a former bookie who insists that he took the bets. Now, listen. But Rose, I'm quoting, declares it is all part of a conspiracy to blackmail him. End of quote.

You know what? This guy is never going to get it right until he's willing to accept responsibility for what he's done. And it says in the article, how do you know when a compulsive gambler is lying?

Answer when you see his lips move. And until Rose gets it straight and accepts responsibility, we're not going anywhere. We can't go to step two. Well, let's say you've accepted the responsibility.

Step two is this. And that is to take that guilt and take it to the right source. Judas took it somewhere. He took it to the wrong place. He took it to a bunch of religious leaders. Don't take it there. You need to take it to God and confess it to God and ask to be forgiven.

That's step two. Look at Psalm 32. Flip back a couple of Psalms.

32 and 51 are all about David's repentance. And look what it says in Psalm 32, verse five. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and I did not cover up my iniquity. I said, verse five, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord and you forgave, look, the guilt of my sin. First John one, verse nine. If we confess our sin, God is faithful and just to forgive us of the sin and cleanse us from all the guilt. Now, why does God make us that offer through the blood of Jesus Christ?

I don't know. We don't deserve that offer, but he makes the offer anyway. And the way I look at it is if somebody makes you a great offer, take it. Take it. You know, somebody offered me nine hundred dollars to buy the lead sled.

You know, the lead sled, that big old station wagon with two hundred thousand miles I had. Somebody offered me nine hundred dollars for it. You say, why? I don't know. Don't ask me. You say, did you sell it?

Are you serious? I sold it like this. I said done. Done deal. You know, where do I sign? You got it, man. I don't know why they made the offer, but I'm not stupid.

If it's a great deal, I took it. I don't know why God offers to forgive our sin the way he does, but he does take him up on it. Take your sin and your guilt to the right source where it can be forgiven. Step three, accept God's forgiveness and go on with your life. Oh, this is the hardest part of the whole thing.

This is the toughest step. Embracing the forgiveness of God and really believing you're forgiven. Look at verse one here in Psalm 32. David said, blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man or the woman whose sin the Lord no longer counts against him. This is a person who is traded in guilt for the cleansing of God and who's rejoicing in that. And the basis on which he believes he's forgiven is not some feel-good flattery or some self-help jargon, but it's the promise of God where God said, I'll forgive you and I'll cleanse you from all your guilt. I read a quote by a British doctor at a large psychiatric hospital in Britain and he said this.

He said, I could dismiss half of my inpatients tomorrow if they could be assured that they were forgiven. I had a girl in my office not too long ago and we got to talking and she just started crying. I'm not a psychotherapist, but I could figure out something was wrong. And so I said, is something wrong? And she said, yeah.

This is why I don't do this for a living because I'm not great at this. I said, well, what's wrong? And she told me the story. She told me how she'd slept with her boyfriend, how she felt incredibly guilty now that the relationship was breaking up and falling apart. And she said to me, you know, she said, I've taken it to God. I've confessed it to God. She said, but I still feel like my life is like a big old jar of white marbles and right in the middle is this black marble. And I can't get rid of this black marble.

I said, hey, I got some good news for you. God is in the business of washing things in Clorox. That's what God does for a living. So we're going to take all those marbles out and we're going to wash them in Clorox.

And the black one's going to turn white because that's what God says. God says that when he forgives, he takes our sin as far away from us as the east is from the west. Psalm 103. God says that when he forgives Micah chapter seven, he takes our sins and he buries them in the depths of the sea.

And I said, so what are we going to do? Are we going to believe what God says about your sin? Are we going to believe how you feel about it?

We need to believe what God says. And folks, many of us here are still carrying guilt that God's forgiven and he's turned the marble white a long time ago. But we won't let it go.

We're still determined to hold on to the black marble. Let it go. You've got to accept the forgiveness of God and you've got to go on. It's OK. God's wiped the slate clean. Fourth step, real quick, ask other people to forgive you if that's appropriate. It isn't always, but sometimes it is. If you wrong somebody, if you wronged a wife, a husband, a child, if you wronged somebody at work, if you whoever, it's an important part of the cleansing to go to them and say, I wronged you and I need to be forgiven. Would you forgive me? And fifth and final step is make the course correction that the tilt meter is trying to tell you about.

I mean, the tilt meter is trying to tell you there were some problems that got you into the ditch. Make some corrections in your attitudes and in your lifestyle so we can have a little thrill of victory here and not just the agony of defeat. I told that girl in my office, I said, OK, so what have we learned from this? She said, I don't know.

I said, well, I'm going to help you. Here's what we've learned. We've learned that we don't sleep with boyfriends anymore. Have we learned this? Because I don't care what he tells you. There's no guarantee it's going to marriage.

And even if it does, it still isn't right. We're not doing this anymore. Have we learned this? You know, will God forgive you again?

Yes. But this is cruel and unusual punishment you're going through. Why do this to yourself? Get smart. And if you've got a pornography problem, you need to make some course corrections.

Don't just keep going to God, confessing it, confessing it, confessing it, confessing it. Change what comes in your house on cable. When you go to a hotel, guys, tell the person at the desk when you walk in, cancel all the movies in my room.

I don't even want to have movie option in my room. Take away the temptation and be proactive about some lifestyle changes. If you've got an alcohol or an abuse problem, find a 12-step group.

We've got one right here. If you need counseling, get some counseling. But friends, the reason the tilt meter goes off and you're feeling guilty is it's trying to tell you you need some course correction. And it's not good enough just to keep going, God forgive me, God forgive me, God forgive me. God will forgive you. But let's make some course corrections, huh? And if you need help, you call us. We'll try to help you. Well, this is guilt. It'll kill you if you let it. But if you handle it right, you can go on and your life can still make a difference and your life can still count.

You can get out of prison. And I hope these steps will help you. Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you are a gracious and forgiving God. Thank you that even when it's real guilt, even when we really have made some bad decisions and some bad choices that cause some bad consequences. Even then, you are a God of forgiveness and of the second chance. You are the God who cleanses the slate.

Lord, we love you for that. And I pray for folks here who are feeling real guilty today about things that have happened in their life. If it's false guilt, I pray you'd show them that and help them to simply walk away from it. If it's real guilt, I pray you'd help them to go through the steps that we've talked about. Embrace the forgiveness of God.

And Lord, help them to make some lifestyle changes that would keep the gyroscope from going tilt again. We love you, God, and thank you that we can always come to you and we'll never find anything but loving arms that forgive and restore. Take away that guilt and help us to live in such a way that we don't bring more of it on ourselves. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you.