Guilt vs Grace
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When I worked in Hospitals… we caught a thief who had been robbing the Dr offices. when they told him that he took $4,000 from an office, he retorted… I only took 1500 …
What do you do when you are driving and a police car pulls up behind you? Slow dow… even of you are going the speed limit… right?
The truth is that all of us, at some point in our lives need to stop and say, I did it. I have struggled with this or that… we all have.
10 For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.
None of us keeps all of the laws all the time. Now we know there are different types of guilt. When you do the crime, be ready to do the time.
But tonight we will look at Guilt and Grace from God’s perspective. When we commit sin, even one little one, we are guilty. All of us have done this so we are all in the same boat.
Let’s look at what guilt really is...
What is guilt?
What is guilt?
We all know what it feels like. David reminds us in Psalm 38…
4 My guilt overwhelms me— it is a burden too heavy to bear.
Many of us know what that feels like… to be burdened and overwhelmed. We have felt the feeling of… wow, I hope no one ever finds out this…
Is that what guilt is? Is it some kind of punishment God sends into your life because you did something you should not have done? No… it’s not.
The purpose of guilt is NOT to make you feel bad. It’s far more than that.
Guilt is a warning light
Guilt is a warning light
warning light on car… friend’s daughter who had her car lock up…
You don’t break the light because it comes on. You know that something needs to be fixed.
Picture this, You and your wife are driving down the road and she says, "What was that? I heard a sound in the engine. Sounds like something's wrong." You say, "I didn't hear anything." She's got a pretty good ear. She's usually hearing that something actually is wrong. But you know if something's wrong, you’re going to have to fix it, so you "don't hear anything"! For me, the engine has to actually fall out before I admit that something is actually wrong.
It’s not hot and I’m not here.
Thats the way too many of us deal with guilt. We ignore it and pretend it’s not there. But the truth is that if something is wrong, it needs to be fixed. When it comes to a car, I could try to fix it myself or take it to the manufacturer who knows what needs to be done.
That’s what we need to do with our lives. That’s what the warning light is saying. You need to spend more time with the Lord. You need God to heal this…
Before we look at the difference between how we deal with guilt and how God deals with guilt, I want to discuss the difference between guilt and shame.
There are two kinds of guilt
There are two kinds of guilt
10 For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. But worldly sorrow, which lacks repentance, results in spiritual death.
1. There is genuine guilt
1. There is genuine guilt
Genuine guilt that comes from the fact that we've all done wrong things that have hurt ourselves, hurt others, and hurt the heart of God.
2. There is false guilt or shame
2. There is false guilt or shame
This is like when the light comes on the dashboard, instead of fixing the car, you worry about what people with think about you because the light came on.
If you're dealing with false guilt you're probably sending yourself a lot of mental e-mail. And they read something like this, "You think that's enough... You call that acceptable .... Look at all the things you haven't gotten finished. ... You have disappointed the people that are around you." That's the kinds of things you're hearing a lot if you're dealing with false guilt
A lot of the time, people who struggle with false guilt struggle with it because of someone else’s sin. Maybe a parent or friend of family abused you… maybe you grew up in a home where your parents manipulated you...
There are also times we can’t get past the false guilt because of our past. We just can’t get past what we did. You may say, I’v asked God to forgive me a thousand times, but I just don’t feel forgiven.
Paul addresses people who struggle with not doing enough for God… they try to make themselves feel better by doing a lot for the Lord.
3 How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?
That happens. We start out good but then we fall back into old habits of trying to make God love us more because we do soooo much for the Lord.
How can you tell the difference between the two kinds of guilt?
How can you tell the difference between the two kinds of guilt?
let me give you some tests…
Is the focus on people or God?
Is the focus on people or God?
False guilt comes from the judgements of others. True guilt comes from divine judgement of what God thinks
If you're struggling with false guilt, you're going to find yourself striving a lot for approval. You need other people’s approval to feel good about yourself. You will need it every day and you will need more and more of it every day. The real problem is that when you struggle with false guilt, you are worn out. Why? Because you are killing yourself trying to live up to other people’s expectations.
Is it vague or specific?
Is it vague or specific?
People will say, it’s like a cloud or a fog of guilt that they don’t know how to get rid of. If I were to ask you what it is about, you would have trouble telling me because it’s too vague.
Almost all the time when it's the vague, foggy feeling of guilt, it's Satan talking to you and not God
When God tells you that you have done something wrong, it’s not vague. He tells you want you did so he can help you get it right. God is not vague. He pinpoints the issue and helps you correct it.
So if it’s a vague feeling, it’s not from God. If it’s specific, it’s God.
Is it based on rules or relationship?
Is it based on rules or relationship?
When you struggle with false guilt, the feeling is that you broke the rules. Genuine guilt makes you feel… I hurt someone.
4 Against you, and you alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in your sight. You will be proved right in what you say, and your judgment against me is just.
David was concerned that he hurt God’s feelings. He didn’t want to hurt his relationship with the Lord. That’s the difference.
When rules become more important than relationship and it can become a religion instead of a relationship with God. Church becomes more about duty than desire. False guilt blinds us to the miraculous work God is doing all around us and it ties us to rules made up by men and not God.
Whatever kind of guilt it is, true or false guilt, we have ways of dealing with it and God has ways of dealing with it.
Our ways of Handling Guilt: Shame, Hiding, Blaming
Our ways of Handling Guilt: Shame, Hiding, Blaming
Remember guilt is a warning light. What are you going to do when that light goes off? How do you handle it? we come up with some crazy ways of doing that and they date back to Adam and Eve.
7 At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves. 8 When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. 9 Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” 10 He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” 11 “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.”
1. We respond with shame
1. We respond with shame
We feel bad about it. It’s like we think that if we just feel bad enough that’s all we need to be ok. That doesn’t work. Shame didn’t work… can you imagine? fig leaves… not comfortable. It didn’t work for Adam and Eve and it will not work for you and I.
Shame tells you that you are a bad person.
2. We respond by hiding
2. We respond by hiding
They put fig leaves on and hid in the bushes from God… as if God didn’t see them. That’s like covering the light on the dashboard pretending nothing is wrong.
I hid when the police came to my house in middle school after derailing a train
3. When we get caught, we Blame
3. When we get caught, we Blame
Look at Adam and Eve. God catches them in a lie about eating from the one tree he told them not to eat from.
God asks Adam, "Did you eat of that fruit of that tree?" Adam took it like a man and he blamed his wife. He points right at Eve, "She did it. It's her fault. She gave me the fruit." So Eve's standing here, blamed too. She points at the serpent, "The serpent did it." Of course the serpent didn't have a leg to stand on
Kathy and I at the airport…
It’s easy to try to blame our way out of trouble… we all do it to some degree at times in our lives.
A young man was driving an old car to church one day, about 20 minutes away from his school. On the way he heard this incredibly terrible sound from the back. So he pulled over, looked at the car. The car looked absolutely fine to him. He called a mechanic that he knew and the mechanic said that sounded bad, "You'd better get that in to somebody right away." But he knew another mechanic about twenty miles down the road that he thought might be cheaper. The car looked fine to him so he thought he would drive it down to the other mechanic. He got about two miles down the freeway and the rear tire flew off the car.
What do you do when the wheels come off? I mean, you looked at it and everything looked ok so you thought you could go a little further… then it stopped working. Blaming and shaming doesn’t work any more.
What do you do when that happens and your ways of dealing with it don’t work? God has ways of dealing with guilt but his way is usually very different than our ways.
God’s way of handling guilt: Grace
God’s way of handling guilt: Grace
When I became a Christian one of the verses I learned was ...
9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
Circle if we confess out sins. That’s dealing with guilt. It’s part of God’s grace.
Circle He is faithful and just - This is God’s character that is part of God’s Grace.
Circle will forgive us - His character says that He will forgive us when we confess to him.
That’s how we need to learn to deal with guilt.
1. Confess your sins
1. Confess your sins
This is where you agree with God that you did it … not just a mistake, but your sin… not just your problems or issues, but your sin.
What is sin?
What is sin?
Sin is characterized by the letter in the middle. “I” Sin is all about I or me. You tell God that you are going to live your life your way without regard for what he wants to do in your life and through your life. That’s what sin is… leaving God out.
So when you confess your sin to God,
Tell God that you left him out and because of it, you have messed things up.
Tell God that you left him out and because of it, you have messed things up.
Usually when it comes to sin, we do one of two things. We try to cover it up or we face up to it. When you face up to it, tell God that you are facing up to it.
How do you confess sin to God? Tell him. Actually he already knows but is waiting for you to agree with him that what you did was wrong.
5 God, you know what I have done wrong; I cannot hide my guilt from you.
You might as well not try to hide anything from God because he already knows everything you have or will ever think, say or do.
Confessing to God is actually agreeing with Him about what you did.
Confessing to God is actually agreeing with Him about what you did.
It literally means to say the same ting about. You are saying God, I agree with you and I know it hurt you and someone else…
You do this through prayer. Prayer is simply a conversation with God.
Maybe you might want to write down your sins and then confess them to God and then shred them or burn them so you can visibly see that God forgives them. Pray 1 John 1:9 over them...
The Bible also encourages us to tell a trusted friend
The Bible also encourages us to tell a trusted friend
16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.
Forgiveness occurs when you confess to the Lord. Healing begins to take place when you tell a trusted friend. There is something about bringing it out of the darkness that works. You often will find that they are or have dealt with the same problems.
You may be thinking that you have tried this over and over. That leads to the second way God handles our guilt. It’s a step we have to take.
2. Trust God’s character
2. Trust God’s character
9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.
He is faithful and just… You can count on him forgiving you. You can count on his love and his faithfulness.
Too many people are afraid to get close to the Lord because they don’t feel forgiven. That’s straight from the devil. The fact is that the closer you get to God, the more forgiven you will feel.
The closer you get to the lord who loved you enough to give up his life for you, the more you will FEEL his love and forgiveness.
Look at this…
22 let us come near to God with a sincere heart and a sure faith, because we have been made free from a guilty conscience, and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
Jesus forgiveness frees us from walking around with a guilty conscience.
When you grow closer to the Lord and experience HIS forgiveness it frees you up to enjoy living and to become the person God created you to be in the first place. You don’t become who God wants you to be through shame, you become who God wants you to be because of His grace.
3. Accept God’s forgiveness
3. Accept God’s forgiveness
God’s Word says that if you will confess your sins, he WILL forgive them but he goes further than that. He says that not only will he forgive you of your sin, but he will cleanse you all unrighteousness.
I want you to understand… ALL means ALL. Too many people believe that God cannot forgive them for what they have done… He can and he does when you confess your sin to him.
18 People who believe in God’s Son are not judged guilty. Those who do not believe have already been judged guilty, because they have not believed in God’s one and only Son.
When you put your faith in Jesus, you are NOT judged guilty.
If you have trusted in Jesus and believed that he paid the price for your sin, why are you still judging yourself as guilty? Jesus said you are not guilty.
If you have never trusted in Jesus, he is saying to you today… I am willing to say NOT GUILTY to you. Why in the world would you not take advantage of that offer?
Listen, people think that when they die they will go to the pearly gates and be judged guilty or not guilty. That’s not where it happens. That is determined in your life here on earth. You can settle that issue today and not have to worry about it. God is willing to declare you not guilty if you will just give your life to Jesus. None of us deserve it, but God’s grace is why he gives it.
That doesn’t mean that you will be perfect from now on out. But when you fall, you get up and you confess your sin to God and he will forgive you.
Imagine that you have surgery and you get the bill. Before you open it, you know it’s going to be a lot, but when you open it, is says, PAID IN FULL, are you going to worry about it anymore? Some of you would. You would figure it’s a glitch or something.
But what if they included a letter from the CEO of the hospital stating that they have paid your bill in full and if there is ever any confusion with the accounting department, show them the letter with his name and signature on it to clear it up. Would that give you more confidence that your bill had been paid? Of course it would.
God has given us that letter. it’s called the Bible. The Bible was written to clearly show that your bill has been paid in full. So the next time Satan and his accounting department accuse you, you use the letter to chase him off.
I know we have people here and listening who struggle with being forgiven. You feel like what you have done can’t be forgiven… that you have hurt people too deeply… and you wonder, How could God forgive me?
When you pick up the Bible and you read story after story that says Yes, God can and will forgive you. Not only that, he wants to use you to help him reach others.
Abraham He began as a guy that worshipped idols. He struggled with lying and told the king that his wife was his sister. Yet, he is known as the Father of our Faith.
Moses He was hot tempered and was a murderer. Yet he is the one who God used to deliver the Israelites from Egypt and through whom the law was given.
John Mark We see him first as a coward who left a mission with Paul because he was afraid, but we know him as the writer of the book of Mark.
Paul Started out as Saul who persecuted Christians. He helped murder Christians. Yet you and I know him as the Apostle Paul who started churches all over the place and wrote most of the New Testament.
Listen to me this morning. God not only wants to free you from Shame and Guilt, God wants to use you in a new way. That’s the good news about Grace. I know this is not easy for some. Guilt has become your best friend… like a teddy bear with teeth. You cuddle it but it bites.
Maybe you feel that if you step out into God’s grace that you would not stay motivated. You think that feeling bad will help keep you in line. Has it? No. It doesn’t work.
It’s scary and it takes faith to step out into God’s grace, but that’s what I want you to do today. Step out of guilt into grace.
Others of you have been pretending that it’s not there… that you have not done anything wrong. You just pretend that it’s not there. Listen to David…
5 until I finally admitted all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, “I will confess them to the Lord.” And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.
Some of you need the first half of that verse where it says, I finally admitted my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them...
Others need the 2nd half where he said, and you for gave me. All my guilt is gone. Don’t wait 10 … 20 years to hear the 2nd part of this verse. God wants to forgive you today… not because you deserve it, but because he loves you.
Altar and Prayer
Ask God to forgive you and come into your life. Admit your sins to God...
Some of you need to ask God to help you live by grace and not by guilt today.