Love Life 2024 (April 28)

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Today, the message time is going to address every single one of us in this room. We are not pointing any fingers here today. We are all in the same sinking boat.

Your sin may be different than my sin. And my sin different than other peoples sin, (so on and so forth), but the results of those unique sins are all the same. Death. The wages of sin is death.

We accumulate “real guilt” and that real guilt begins to kill us. The causation of our guilt is the same. Sin.

Sin is SAD. Sin. Always. Destroys.

Sin destroys relationships. Sin destroys reputations. Sin even destroys our own consciences because sin has a traveling companion called guilt. They are a destructive dynamic duo. They are hand in hand and go everywhere together. Sin always destroys.

And, the biblical authors talk about how sexual sin is in a category of it’s own. So the weight of guilt regarding sexual sin is even more damaging.

1 Corinthians 6:18 (ESV)

18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

Being made in God’s image, we actually have the ability to procreate. We can use our bodies to make more image bearers. This is astounding. We have God-like powers in our sex organs. We have the ability to create, but sadly we also have the ability to choose what we do with what we have created. Our society celebrates the “right” to abort the mission of being fruitful and multiplying and we pull this off by destroying what we have created.

When we do this we invite suffering into our lives. We have the capacity to destroy ourselves because of our choices.

When we sin, in any type of way, we actively invite guilt in and give it squatters rights and we end up living in its shadow in a state of death.

What can be done when a real debt of guilt has been accumulated? What can we do when we begin bearing the weight of a guilty conscience and the passing of time does not lighten the load?

There is only one way, that has been given to us by our Creator, to not just lighten the load of our real guilt, but completely eliminate it. Our real guilt can be aborted, but only through the abundance of grace that is delivered to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

What can wash away my sin/guilt; nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make me whole again, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh, precious is the flow, that makes me white as snow.

No other fount, I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.

I can’t wait to tell you about the fountain I have come to know.

It can wash away all of our real guilt. Whether we have accumulated real guilt from sexual sin, or from flippantly spoken falsehoods to manipulate situations or save our faces. Any and all sin that that you and I have committed that have heaped up real guilt on our souls can be taken away and when we are plunged into the truth of the Gospel. All our guilty stains can be washed away.

What can we do with our guilt?

Today let’s consider what was shared with a group of men who were gathered in an Upper Room with Jesus on the night He was betrayed.

Let’s look at what Jesus said to a group of men, who after 3 years of on the job, extensive training, would all collectively and individually deny even being associated with Him.

Let’s look at what Jesus said to this group of men who, in His greatest moment of human need, slept on Him and failed to keep watch for Him 3 times over after, as a band of soldiers emerged out of the darkness with torches and weapons.

What will Jesus say to this group of men, who are about to accumulate an astounding amount of guilt.

To them He says,

John 15:3–5 (ESV)

3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Pray

This is not a full exposition of this text. We simply want to notice two stunning realities this morning.

Stunning reality number one. To those who have accumulated real guilt,

The cleansing that we could never bring about ourselves is ours because of Christ.

Look at what Jesus says, “Already you are clean.” Jesus is speaking in a present tense way, of something that has take place prior. “Already.” Prior to this moment and the moments that are about to unfold on this fateful night that will end up getting me killed and you all guilt ridden, “already you are clean.”

The cleansing that we have is not because of what we have done, it is because Jesus has spoken into our lives.

The word that has been spoken to us in the context of this Upper Room is not some magical word of pardon; it is in reference to the whole teaching that has been given to these men for 3 years now. These men, at this point knew that Jesus was the way, truth and the life. They knew that no one could be holy enough to come to the Father except through Him.

John tells us why he wrote down about Jesus was he wrote down so that we…

John 20:31 (ESV)

31 …may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

If you and I want to have life in His name, we have to believe what He has said.

These guilty guys in the Upper Room have been previously taught how to offload and come out from under their guilt. They need to be united to Jesus by faith.

And that leads us to the second stunning reality.

We must abide in Him.

What I mean by this is we need to continually rehearse what Jesus has “spoken” into our lives. You and I are clean because of what Jesus has done. We must remain steadfast in this belief because we are all going to continue to accumulate guilt every time we sin.

The cleansing that God offers us in Christ is not in the “just enough” category. It is poured out in abundance and overflows into to every arena of our lives where we have sinned.

It’s plentiful, and powerfully effective. It doesn’t just “barely work.”

God’s ability to pardon our guilt is powerful, potent and impressively successful.

So what are we to do when we remember what we have done and we hear the loud voice of guilt ringing in our ears? Or what are we to do if we hear murmurs of it whispering to all of us “fallen short people,” “Remember me?”

In those moments we need to hear a louder voice that is forever, authoritatively documented in our Holy Scriptures:

John 15:3–4 (ESV)

3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me…

As unrelenting as your guilt is, when we abide in Christ, that guilt can be aborted if we remember and believe in the work of the guilt bearer.

1 Corinthians 6:11 (ESV)

11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Romans 8:1 (ESV)

1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Pray

Song: All Gone

Response:

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