The Habit of Sorrow
Notes
Transcript
Sorrow
Sorrow
I’ve got a tough question to start with today. How many of you have ever been caught doing something wrong? I promise not to ask for any details about what you were doing! Let’s take this thought a little deeper. When you were caught how many of you felt sorry? Going a little deeper, were you sorry that you got caught or were you sorry that you did something wrong?
One time I was complaining about someone in the worst possible place to share complaints. I was sending text messages to a good friend of mine. At one point I noticed that I had actually sent one of the messages to the person I was complaining about rather than my good friend. I panicked! I wasn’t sorry about talking bad about that person, just sorry that I had just got caught!
Another time I said something bad about someone who I really cared about and it really hurt them. This time I wasn’t sorry for getting caught, I was sorry for saying something I shouldn’t have and hurting them.
If you want to change your life, the first thing you have to do is change your habits. If you want to change your habits, you must let God change your heart. For the last few weeks we have been looking at some healthy habits and asking God to change our hearts in a Life Church series called, “Habits of a Healthy Heart.” As a quick recap we have already looked at three habits…
First we looked at the habit of “Self Examination.” Before we can even know what we need to change we have to be willing to look at ourselves honestly and let God show us where He wants to work. Next we looked at the habit of “Simplicity.” We asked God to give us less of what doesn’t matter and more of what does matter. Last week we talked about the habit of “Solitude.” Jesus consistently and intentionally removed Himself from the business of life to find a quiet place to slow His mind and be alone with God.
Next week we will finish out this series as we look at the habit of “Steadfastness.” Today’s habit is one that the devil doesn’t want you to adopt. If your spiritual enemy can keep you from this one habit he can keep you living in shame, he can keep you distant from God, and he can keep you from fulfilling your calling.
Today we are talking about the habit of Godly sorrow.
Pray
Let’s talk about Godly sorrow. This comes from chapter 7 of 2 Corinthians where Paul talks about two kinds of sorrow. Take a look at this with me, starting in verse 9…
2 Corinthians 7:9 (NIV)
9 yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended…
Now he describes the difference between Godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. What does Godly sorrow bring?
10 Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
There are two kinds of sorrow. Godly sorrow and worldly sorrow.
Godly sorrow brings repentance and leads to salvation. Worldly sorrow brings remorse and leads to spiritual death.
Godly sorrow is the kind of sorrow that leads to repentance and turning away from sin. The other kind of sorrow is the worldly sorrow that says, “Oh, I am sorry I got caught. Not sorry that I sinned and did something wrong, just that you found out.” It’s the kind of sorrow that leads to remorse. I don’t really want to change, I’m just kind of embarrassed that I got caught, and it leads to spiritual death.
How does worldly sorrow lead to spiritual death? Well, it lies. It tries to rationalize. It justifies our own sin. It will even point out and amplify the sin in other people’s lives to minimize our own faults.
Jesus spoke about this in the sermon on the mount. I know we’ve all heard His message about the speck and the plank in the first few verses in chapter 7 of Mathew. Admittedly, it is easy for me to be guilty of doing this very thing. It is easy to find faults in others while simultaneously making excuses for my own short comings. It is easy to point out the speck in someone else’s eye while ignoring, rationalizing, and justifying the plank in my own eye. Maybe you struggle with this as I do. What are we doing…
We tend to accuse others and excuse ourselves.
This is especially true today. Everything in our culture excuses our faults and tries to lessen the impact of our failures. Our culture teaches us to “Re-brand Sin.” Think about how powerful it is, as a worldly sorrow, to change words. For example, some don’t like the word “Sin.” I didn’t sin, that is too strong of a word. I just made a mistake. A popular thing today is to live “my truth.” I’m not sinning, I am living my truth. Who are you to tell me I am sinning? Who are you to define sin for ME?
Lie? That word is too strong. I didn’t tell a lie. I just exaggerated a little. Just bent the truth so that it sounded better. I stretched the truth. It was just a little fib, no big deal.
God calls sex outside of marriage fornication. That makes me feel dirty, like I am doing something wrong. It’s easy to rationalize my own sin so that it doesn’t seem like a big deal. This is 2024! Instead of calling it fornication let’s just call it cohabitation. We are saving money. We just want to see how it goes. I mean, you wouldn’t by a car without taking it for a test drive.
Scripture says that the sexually immoral, idolaters, men who have sex with men, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, slanderers, and swindlers won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Oh, but that is too strong. I’m not any of those things, I just like to party. I just need to unwind every now and then. I just have needs.
I am not gossiping, I am just sharing out of concern so you can pray for so and so. We rationalize, we justify, we ignore, and we change the wording and the definition of sin so that we can be entertained by sin.
20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
In other words…
Changing the wording doesn’t change the sin.
What is sin? Instead of changing the word to what I wish it meant, I want to understand what the word actually means in scripture. In the NT, the Greek word we translate to “sin” is “Hamartia.” The Greek word, Hamartia, is an archery term that means “to miss the mark.” You’ve all probably seen a target with the different sizes of circles. To hit the mark is to hit the bullseye. Hamartia, or sin, is missing the bullseye.
Since God isn’t inviting people into His presence based on how they can shoot a bow, what is God’s target? His perfect standard of righteousness. In truth, nobody has ever lived up to God’s perfect standard of righteousness except for one person, Jesus. Everyone else who has ever lived has missed the mark… fallen short… sinned.
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Some of you might be thinking, “I already know this. Why do we have to talk about sin? I already feel bad for eating a handful of M&M’s and a donut this morning.” The point is that in order to have Godly sorrow instead of worldly sorrow, our first step is to recognize that we are sinners in need of a savior. That is where repentance starts. If you are taking notes, the short version is this…
Until you see yourself as a sinner, you won’t see your need for a Savior.
I sinned. I got caught talking bad about someone. Then I felt sorry that I got caught. I felt remorse. Remember, worldly sorrow leads to remorse, which leads to spiritual death.
Remorse is not the same as repentance.
Remorse stops at feeling bad about what you did. Repentance is when you feel bad about what you did and then you turn from it. Let’s talk about worldly sorrow for a second…
Maybe you did something wrong and you are still defensive about it. You make excuses. You blame someone or something else. “Whatever went wrong here wasn’t my fault.” You are sorry… Sorry you got caught. You are sorry it hurt you, but blind to how it hurt others. Instead this moment of sorrow drawing you to God, you run from Him. You change the words.
At some point, if you’ve been running long enough, you don’t even recognize yourself anymore. You wake up one day and wonder how you got to this point. You realize that you aren’t as close to God as you once were. You used to love God, but not as much anymore. Your heart has grown cold toward God. You may even ask yourself, “Why don’t I feel God?”
The answer… Sin leads to spiritual death because sin separates us from God.
I love cold weather, but sometimes I wonder if I like the cold because I love to dress warm. When it is cold outside, there is nothing like putting on some warm socks and thermal underwear. Having a nice warm jacket, and a beanie. Then, even though I am out in the cold I don’t feel cold. I’m covered in all of these warm clothes.
It is the same thing when we are out in the world and covered in sin. When we are covered in warm clothes we can’t feel the cold. When we are covered in SIN we can’t feel God.
If you can’t feel God, what sin have you befriended? What sin have you gotten comfortable with? What sin is entertaining you? Are you rationalizing it? “It’s no big deal. I don’t have a problem, I can quit any time. It’s not my fault. It’s just this one thing. I’m not as bad as most people.”
Rationalizing your sin is the first sign your heart is growing cold.
Worldly sorrow may make you feel bad, but it lacks repentance. Godly sorrow is different. Godly sorrow is a deep and sincere brokenness about what you’ve done wrong. Godly sorrow is marked by a genuine humility and grief, not because you got caught, but because you sinned. You missed God’s mark of righteousness. It is a heartfelt repentance to God.
If we want Godly sorrow instead of worldly sorrow, what do we have to do? Before we can try to rationalize we must Confess Quickly and Repent Wholeheartedly.
Confess Quickly.
Repent Wholeheartedly.
Confess Quickly. Repent Wholeheartedly. Look at 1 John 1:9…
9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
When you confess, He forgives you. When you sin, confess quickly, but don’t leave the door open to continue to miss the mark. Repent wholeheartedly. You could think of the word “repent” like this. Separate it into it’s two parts. “RE” means to turn. You are going one way, but when you repent you turn from that way to another. “PENT” is like the penthouse. You are going one way that leads down to death and destruction, but you turn from that way and look up to God’s penthouse. You are receiving God’s undeserved mercy and grace.
Repenting wholeheartedly changes you. It makes you different. You don’t feel sorry for yourself, but you have a Godly sorrow about what you have done.
Pastor Craig has a friend that battles with addiction to pornography, and he told Craig that “all these years I’m still fighting the urge to look at porn.”
In response, Craig said, “Do you want me to tell you the good news that you just said? You just said that you are still fighting, meaning that you haven’t rationalized. You haven’t given into it.”
Not quite understanding, the guy explained what his repentance looked like. He said that He tells God he is sorry and then three days later he goes online on his mobile phone and does it again.
Craig then asks how he is closing the door. He said, “You look at it, then you turn from it. How are you closing the door? Go ask God what you can do to repent to close that door.”
A few days later he came to Craig saying, “I repented, I repented, I repented!” and he showed Craig his dumb phone. He explained, “If I continued doing that it was going to cost me my marriage. I’d rather have a dumb phone and my marriage than a smart phone without it.”
That is repentance. Now the man has been months without looking at porn for the first time since he was 13 years old!
In the Beatitudes, Jesus said…
4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
This is commonly thought of as God comforting those who mourn a loss, and He does, but the Greek words that Jesus uses here more likely refer to comforting those who mourn over their personal sin. Blessed are those who are truly sad they sinned against God. Blessed are those whose heart is breaking because they broke the heart of God.
It is very similar to the woman who was caught in adultery and teachers and Pharisees wanted to stone her. That’s when Jesus knelt down by her and started writing in the sand. We don’t know what Jesus wrote, but some scholars think that He started writing down their sins. I think there is something to this because the older ones started leaving first. Maybe because they had the most sins. According to one commentary, whatever He wrote appeared to prompt the leaders’ conviction of conscience causing everyone to leave except for Jesus and the woman.
That’s when Jesus said, “Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one.” Then Jesus said, “Then neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
Can you see how much God loves you? Isn’t God’s love amazing? Paul asks this question for us to ponder in Romans…
4 Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?
It’s not God’s anger, wrath, and justice that leads you to repentance. It’s His love. His grace. His kindness that leads you to repentance. That is why this is one habit that the Devil doesn’t want you to adopt. He wants to keep you living in shame. He wants to keep you distant from God. Insulated in sin. He wants to keep you from fulfilling your calling. He wants you to live in fear and remorse.
Worldly sorrow tries to cover up sin. It minimizes and rationalizes. Changing the words and making excuses. Pointing out where other people are worse.
Godly sorrow confesses quickly and repents wholeheartedly. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret. God is patient and kind so that we will turn from sin.
If sin is keeping you from experiencing an intimate relationship with God, I pray that you will let God change your heart today and teach you to become sorrowful the way God intended. That He would develop the habit of Godly sorrow in you.
Pray