What About the Guilt

I was on staff at a church in Bedford, TX; part of D/FW.

Every year on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision we would put crosses on our front lawn representing the number of babies lost to abortion on an average day in TX.

This was the late 1990s.

We would put up over 100. You can do the math.

It was a sober and somber reminder of the death of innocents that happens 1000s of times daily across this country.

One of the things we don’t talk about much is the emotional effect on the mother, father, and anyone else involved in the procedure.

Friends, family, others.

The grief is real. There is no getting around the feelings and stages of grief when a woman ends her pregnancy like this. It is a near certainty and reality of the after affects.

We stopped putting those crosses up one year after a member of our church had a conversation with me.

He was a single guy, divorced, dating a woman at the time. He was a member and regularly attended on Sundays.

He said, his significant other would never attend our church as long as we put those crosses up even though it was only for a few days every year.

He said she had had an abortion as a younger woman those crosses took her to a place emotionally that she did not want to go. She didn’t want to go once, much less annually.

She needed grace. She needed love and acceptance. She needed support b/c she needed to do something with the guilt that stuck w/ her.

She had had the procedure years earlier. But the feelings of guilt remained.

What could she do w/ the guilt?

2 College students back in the early 80s. They were roommates and best friends.

They’ve remained friends to this day, though a distance has come between them just b/c of the time and physical distance of their families and careers.

One lives on the east coast. Raised a family. She got into management and peaked as a successful VP w/ IBM.

They graduated. Then, in 1982, she was involved w/ a guy who was really nobody special, but she got pregnant with him.

She was well on her way to a career in technology. But an ill-timed pregnancy threatened that.

She couldn’t tell her parents. She couldn’t afford an abortion. So she turned to her roommate and best friend for financial help paying for it.

She had the procedure and went on w/ her successful professional life.

Her roommate, equally as successful. She was a brand new Xian at the time of her best friends dilemma. She wanted to be there for her friend and believed the best way to support her was to help her pay for her procedure.

Over time, she grew in her faith and came to feel the inevitable guilt from her actions.

She moved to Dallas, met a guy there in church. They married in ‘84. And moved to Munds Park in 2015.

The roommate is my wife, Sara.

What could Sara do w/ her guilt that she felt?

This Easter season I am focusing us on the roles Jesus plays in our life. Sunday we considered Jesus as our prophet, priest, and King.

Tonight, it’s Good Friday and our focus is to consider Him as the Lamb of God who saves us and our Scapegoat who takes our guilt as far away as the East is from the West.

Lamb of God

The Lamb first became a representative of what God would for people who have faith at the very first Passover.

Israel had been enslaved by Pharaoh and the Egyptians. God raised up Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt as He delivered them from slavery.

Pharaoh was reluctant to let them go. So God sent plagues to punish Egypt for their stubborn resistance.

The last plague was the worst. And it was the last straw that led Pharaoh to let God’s ppl go.

The day of the plague, God gave them these instructions

Exodus 12:3 NIV

Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.

Exodus 12:5 NIV

The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.

Exodus 12:12–13 NIV

“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

The lamb or goat, couldn’t be speckled or even have 1 spot in its wool. One single color, spotless.

The animal could not be lame or sick, but it had to be the healthiest of the flock.

The actual putting of the blood on the posts didn’t save the ppl. Their faith in God did that. They believed that God would be gracious and save them so they behaved by obeying His instructions.

So the blood on the posts was sign of their belief so God saved them that night and then delivered them from the oppression of slavery and into their Paradise.

This event is brought back into focus when Jesus first appeared on the scene to begin his ministry.

Before His first message or miracle, He presented Himself to John the Baptist to be baptized in the Jordon River.

John introduced him this way:

John 1:29 NIV

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

Everyone gathered around the river that day to hear John and have him immerse them would have immediately understood what he was saying.

Every year since that first Passover, Jews celebrated by eating the Passover meal including a perfect lamb reminding them of what God had promised He would do.

Jesus is our Lamb. He is spotless and perfect. Our belief and His blood on the post promises to save us.

Jesus is also our Scapegoat.

Scapegoat

During OT times, on the Day of Atonement, God gave believing people another rite to practice that pictured what He promised to do for them.

Annually, on this day, the high priest was to select 2 goats to be used in a special ceremony.

Leviticus 16:7–10 NIV

Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat. Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat.

Leviticus 16:21–22 NIV

He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.

The only way to atone for the deficit we create between us and God is with a life. Something needs to die.

The death of the goat, literally, does nothing. It represents something Jesus will do for us.

With Jesus’s death, our judicial guilt is paid for. We are made right w/ God as Jesus atones for our sin w/ his life.

But what about the guilt we feel? It’s just as real as the judicial guilt we generate by breaking God’s law.

The guilt we feel can be debilitating. It’s oppressive. It can bind us up and enslave us.

Even after we are released from responsibility, we can be weighed down, oppressed by the guilt we feel.

What do we do with that?

When the goat ran off into the wilderness, did he really take their guilt w/ him? No.

If the goat actually accomplished this, then the guilt would never come back. But as we all know, it tends to return.

They had to believe that God would take it away and the goat represented what God would do for them.

The goat didn’t do it. The law didn’t do. Only Jesus could do it.

Romans 7:24–8:2 NIV

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

You know the feeling. You’ve said to yourself, “What a wretched person I am.” You’ve messed up that bad and felt horrible about it.

No rule obeyed perfectly makes anyone feel better. Only Jesus can do that.

And what he did for us that Friday broke the binding and took the guilt far away.

Psalm 103:11–12 NIV

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

If Jesus took it away, why does it return?

It returns b/c we take it back unnecessarily. It’s gone.

And the same Enemy who thought he’d won when Jesus died boomerangs the guilt back on us.

He reminds you, what a wretched fool you are. Well, He says you are. Jesus says you were.

No longer a wretched fool, racked by guilt. But when Jesus takes it away, we have to leave it on the cross.

Jesus came off the cross, but our guilt must remain there never to be taken back.

Jesus is both our goat for the Lord and our Scapegoat.

And it was on Good Friday when he fulfilled these roles for us.

Good Friday

Mark 15:21–39 NIV

A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”). Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get. It was nine in the morning when they crucified him. The written notice of the charge against him read: the king of the jews. They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save yourself!” In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Messiah, this king of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him. At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how he died, he said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!”

Tonight, we have the opportunity to leave our guilt on the cross.

On that first Good Friday, Jesus is the Lamb of God who left His blood on the post to save us. His blood is still there. By itself it does nothing for us. Our faith in its effect saves us.

Death will pass over us. We are saved and will be delivered from the oppression of slavery to sin and guilt and into our Paradise.

Jesus is the goat who died as an atonement for our sin and is the goat who was released to take our guilt away permanently.

But, we have to leave it there.

What can a woman do who feels the guilt of a decision made years earlier that still dogs them and weighs them down? What can she do so that she never has to revisit those feelings again?

What can Sara do, and other like her, who believed at the time she was doing right by her friend only to grow in her faith and realize she did wrong by that baby?

What can she do w/ her guilt.

What can we do when we constantly take back the feelings that followed a bad decision that make us feel horrible?

The hard part is, that’s why Jesus allowed Himself to be nailed to the cross. I am responsible. We are responsible.

We need the Lamb of God and the Scapegoat b/c we are guilty.

Tonight, we can nail the sin that dogs us to the cross and leave it here, never to take it back again.

Jesus is the Lamb of God who saves us and the Scapegoat who takes our guilt away as far as the East is from the West.

So there is now no condemnation for for those who are in Christ Jesus.

We never have to take it back. Let it go. Let it stay here.