Guilt steals Joy
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 8 viewsNotes
Transcript
Intro
I don’t know about you but Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year. A time to get together with family and friends and enjoy good food. That’s a recipe for good cheer.
During this time we're often reminded to count our blessings, think of all the things we should be thankful for. Which is good practice.
Last week, one worship song we sang was “Give Thanks.” Sometimes when singing in worship, one song will just really stick out and hit you. Last week that was the song for me. Because God gave us his only Son, Jesus Christ, we give thanks. No matter how rough life can get sometimes, because of Christ, we always have a reason to give thanks.
Giving thanks with a grateful heart is something we should do as Christians, along with many other disciplines. But Satan will always try to find some way to suppress that. No matter where you’re at in your walk, Satan is always scheming. If he can’t destroy you, he’s going to at least try and minimize your impact. And stealing your joy is one way of doing that.
One of the most common ways I think he can accomplish this is through guilt. We need to understand the difference between guilt or condemnation and conviction. When we know we’ve done something wrong, we usually don’t feel very good inside. Satan wants us to feel guilty and keep us there, which end up having impacts on our physical and spiritual life. The Holy Spirit convicts us, and wants us to bring our sin before God and work through it, bringing us closer to Him. Understanding the difference is important, otherwise we could believe all the accusations and guilt from Satan are from God and be very troubled.
We’re going to open up to Romans 8
Free from condemnation of the law
So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.
By the law, we would be guilty for sin. We would have to live up to the whole law. But when Christ came and died on the cross as the atonement for our sins, all that guilt from the law was blown away. “There is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.” Many months ago when Don was preaching he said I don’t believe in saying I’m a sinner, because I’ve accepted Christ, I’m a saint. And that’s right. God views us as righteous when we accept Christ, it is not by our works.
Let’s read Psalm 32:1-5
Oh, what joy for those
whose disobedience is forgiven,
whose sin is put out of sight!
Yes, what joy for those
whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt,
whose lives are lived in complete honesty!
When I refused to confess my sin,
my body wasted away,
and I groaned all day long.
Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me.
My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat.
Interlude
Finally, I confessed all my sins to you
and stopped trying to hide my guilt.
I said to myself, “I will confess my rebellion to the Lord.”
And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.
Interlude
You can see how when David fell into guilt in disobedience it says “My body wasted away”, “I groaned all day long.” That’s right where Satan wants us. We need to remember not to look inward and fall into the trap of guilt. We are free from condemnation and guilt from the law. We look outward towards God’s loving grace and repent of our sins when we are convicted.
2. Importance of conviction
Conviction is very important. If we don’t acknowledge conviction from God, we would think guilt and conviction are the same feeling and all are from Satan, and therefore not feel the need to correct our steps. This is essentially the view of Antinomianism, reject the law and reject any religious moral norms. Christ set you free, do whatever you want. This will lead to a very distant relationship with Christ. Conviction is absolutely necessary for us to be aware of our actions that are taking us farther away from Christ so we can respond appropriately and correct our ways.
Let’s look at pain as an example. Have you ever heard someone say, “Boy, I would like to feel some pain today.” There are people that actually wish to feel pain. There’s a disease called Congenital insensitivity to pain (CIP). People born with this disease never feel physical pain. It’s not that they can’t feel anything at all, there nervous system just doesn’t detect pain or send the message to the brain. On one hand that sounds great, no pain, but when you think about it more, it’s awful. Our nerves have a purpose. When we have a toothache, are touching something too hot, or maybe bending our body in a way it wasn’t meant to bend, the nervous system is communicating this important information so we can correct our course of action. Take the hand a way from the burner or get that heavy object off your foot.
Because of the importance of the nervous system detecting pain, those with CIP suffer many severe injuries. They wish they could feel pain. Next time you think about counting your blessings, don’t forget “Feeling Pain.”
But in fact, it is best for you that I go away, because if I don’t, the Advocate won’t come. If I do go away, then I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of its sin, and of God’s righteousness, and of the coming judgment.
One of the reasons we needed the Holy Spirit was for conviction. Because the longer you continue down a path away from God, just like bodily harm undetected can get more and more severe, so can your relationship with God. We can’t push that feeling aside and hide in our sin. We must confront what we know is wrong, look to God for correction and pursue holiness and closeness with Him. And we don’t look back.
I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
Paul, an apostle of God, who did so much for work for the glory of God, never claimed to have achieved what needed to be done while on earth. He was always trying to know God more and spread the Word. His model to live by was a race. And the finish line was the end of life, when he would be with God in Heaven. He makes a point to say his focus is on “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead” When you’re running a race, you don’t stop running before you reach the finish line, and ideally you don’t look back because that’ll slow you down. Guilt tries to stop you from moving forward with Christ, it tries to keep you in the past, always looking behind and not what’s in front of you. Guilt will last as long as we give it permission to. Conviction lasts momentarily. We repent to God and we press on forward with the race.
We can avoid pitfalls from our decisions if we know the Word of God well and seek the Holy Spirit for discernment and good judgement. Once again you see Paul using the example of a race in 1 Corinthians.
All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize.
Just like athletes train for their races, we need to be disciplined in our pursuit of Christ to know him more as we go through the race of life. We’re all in the race. And we’ll receive the ultimate reward, infinitely more important than any material thing that can be possessed. Which should give us all the more motivation and desire to know Christ more.
We should pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ, as Paul did,
I pray that your love will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until the day of Christ’s return.
Pure and blameless is the bar that Christ set. It’s what we go for, but we know we’ll have pitfalls. And when we do and we feel convicted, look outward to Christ, repent of our sin, pray for knowledge and understanding, and continue on with the race.
Give thanks for what the Lord has done and don’t let guilt steal your joy.