Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

Introduction:

Today, I’ve got to warn you.

It's going to be a little bit heavy, so I want to just tell you on the front side, be prepared.

We're going to talk about the deeply painful emotion known as shame.

What's so interesting is this time of year, around Christmas time and the holidays, a lot of people seem to battle shame from the past even more than other times of the year.

In fact, shame can be described like this: Shame is a soul crushing, identity warping emotion.

In fact, I bet most of you, if you think back in your childhood, you can probably remember some of the first times when you did something and experienced a feeling of shame.

There is a difference between guilt and shame.

What is guilt?

Guilt is the feeling that I did bad.

Shame is the idea that I am bad.

Guilt is, "I did something bad."

Shame is the emotion that says, "I am bad.

We connect what we did with who we are.

Illustration: Growing up and did something wrong and experiencing the shame of what you did.

Before long, you put words on it.

What do you say?

I don't know, but here are some different words that you may identify in your own identity:

I am defective.

I am damaged.

I am broken.

I am flawed.

I am dirty.

I am ugly.

I am impure.

I am disgusting.

I am unlovable.

I am weak.

I am pitiful.

I am insignificant.

I am worthless.

I am unwanted.

After going through all that, it’s no wonder people want to have a drink or do drugs to numb the feeling of shame and depression!

There is counseling term called “shame-based thinking.”

The idea of what they call shame based thinking is this: When your identity is colored by something that you did and you start to embrace a negative view of who you are, you adopt what they call a shame based mindset.

There are three big ideas of how shame based thinking impacts us.

The first one is this, when we have shame based thinking, we're vulnerable to perfectionism.

We're vulnerable to perfectionism.

We attempt to silence our shame with an error free performance, and we find it difficult to ever admit failure.

We want to silence the sham e by performing at the highest standard and say, "Look, I'm not that bad.

I did it.

I exceeded.

I got it just right," and we're very vulnerable to perfectionism.

The second thing is that we're critical of ourselves, making us critical of others.

We're very, very hard on ourselves, and that, in turn, makes us hard on other people.

What happens?

We see our own faults mirrored in other people, and when we see our faults in other people, we become judgmental of them, and then they perceive us as arrogant or self-righteous, and that's why you may observe some times when you find someone who is an angrily critical person, "Ah, this that, this that, and this that."

So often that person is dealing with a very dark, very real, very secret shame.

Why?

They reflect their own weakness and see it in other people, and lash out, because they hate the very thing that dwells within them.

The third thing, if you're taking notes, is this.

We use self-defeating thoughts as a form of protection and escape.

What do we do?

We focus on the worst possible outcome, saying, "This bad thing is going to happen, and they're never going to like me, and I'm never going to amount to anything, and we'll never have a close relationship," and through our own self-defeating thoughts, we end up sabotaging opportunities and relationships.

That's why Christmas can get so crazy.

What happens?

You're around the table and your mom lashes out at you for no reason at all.

Where did that come from?

You don’t recognize that she's dealing with some internal identity warping shame that causes her to say something harmful.

Your dad goes off and gets drunk and disengages from everyone.

You're like, "There he goes again," and you don't recognize that it's his unhealthy and unproductive way of coping with a very real and internal shame.

Your in-laws pick at you about the way you raise your kids.

"Why would they do this," and the reality is perhaps they feel inadequate, like they didn't succeed in doing everything that wanted to, and they mirror that in you and pick at you .

Or what do you do?

You become hyper critical of everybody else.

Why?

Because deep down, you're very critical of yourself, reflecting an inward warped identity battling with shame.

There is good news though!

Why is it that if you're a Jesus follower, we can be completely free from the shame of our past?

Maybe you've been a Jesus follower for a long time, and you know that truth in 1 John, why do you not feel it and embrace it in your heart?

The truth is it can be very, very difficult to overcome shame, because, again, it becomes a part of our identity.

Transition: I want to explain how this works using a story from the Bible, and then I'll explain how it woks in my life, and we're going to see how Christ can set us all free in all of our lives.

Body:

I.

A biblical example of this is found in Exodus.

If you know in the Old Testament, God's people were actually in bondage as slaves for four hundred and thirty years, four hundred and thirty years.

You can imagine if you were a slave at the end of four hundred and thirty years, you were a slave.

Your parents were slaves.

Your grandparents were slaves for literally week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade, century after century.

Your identity was, "I am worthless.

I am nothing.

I'm just a slave.

I am not important.

My life is not valuable.

I am simply a slave."

If you know the story, God raised up Moses, and Moses went before Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go," and God gave him favor in this way, and Pharaoh released God's people, and they were finally, after over four centuries, freed from slavery.

What happened though?

Though they were free outwardly, most of them were still slaves inwardly.

They were a slave to the shame of their identity from the past.

Let me say it this way.

Though they were out of slavery, slavery was not out of them.

Let me say it this way.

Though they were out of Egypt, Egypt was not yet out of them.

Though they were free in person, they were not yet free in their hearts.

This is the problem that so many of us have.

We may intellectually know, "Jesus has forgiven my sins.

Jesus has made me new," but in our hearts, because our identity is not yet grounded in Christ, we still are polluted by the past shame that holds us hostage and keep s us from living the life that God really wants us to live.

Here's the bottom line.

You can jot this down.