Dealing with Guilt

There's a story that I tell once in a while. It happened 30 years ago, but at this time of year, I think about this story a lot. It was early in my ministry. I went to visit a man who wasn't in our church there in Houston, and I had to drive at least an hour and a half to two hours to go out to visit him. But he said he was dying. And so I went out to visit him and his family, and he looked jaundice. He had dark, inset eyes. I mean, he looked very, very ill. And I was talking to him about his illness. He believed his illness was a punishment from God because of sins he had committed. And we talked for a long time, and I finally said, you know, God forgives you for sins. And he said, well, no, he won't forgive me. My sins are too great. And he said, and this trial is even more difficult because my doctor says I'm not sick. I said, well, did you go get a second opinion? He says, yes. The two doctors said you're dying, but you're not sick. You're feeling so guilty, you're killing yourself. His feelings of guilt were so overwhelming. He was dying. And his wife said, I'm watching him die. I am watching him die. He wasn't eating. And he believed, though, that he had serious illnesses that were punishment from God. Punishment from God. And I went back. I called a minister that I knew that was just an expert at counseling people. He said, Gary, go back. Explain to him about God's forgiveness. But he says, if he will not accept God's forgiveness, there's nothing you can do. So I went back. I called him. I went back to see him. And I just once again went through God's forgiveness. And he said, God will not forgive me. As far as I know, the man died. I mean, he never called me again. We never had any interaction after that. His wife and children were just devastated. He had a couple little children. But he just believed God could not forgive him. And God would not forgive him. At this time of year, as we approach the Passover, guilt is part of Christian theology. We all go towards the Passover. We all approach the sacrifice of Jesus Christ because we believe we are guilty. We have actually done something, and we are guilty of it.

But this interaction with this man had such an impact on me because it made me realize there's not just the state of guilt, but the feelings. You know, I feel guilty. We all say that. I feel guilty is a powerful statement. And the feelings of guilt have a tremendous effect on us.

What is guilt? What are the feelings of guilt? And they're connected, but at times they have to be disconnected. So how do we do that? How do we do that? I mean, guilt is a literal thing. Guilt is, I have done something wrong. And you know you've done something wrong, right? Even as a child, you steal something. Most children know I shouldn't have done that. They know. And they feel guilty that they stole something.

We can feel guilty for a lot of things, but guilt itself, so we're separating feeling guilty and the state of guilt. The state of guilt is you've done something wrong. Now this is tied into conscience. We're going to have to talk about conscience here because a person's conscience can actually be developed to the point that they don't think they don't feel guilty. They can do something wrong, and they don't feel guilty. But even a child, most children, if they have a healthy sort of emotional mental state, figure out certain things are wrong, right? You punch somebody and it's like, I probably shouldn't have done that. There's a feeling that this is not right. This is not good. It becomes very mixed up in human beings, though, as we get older. And the feelings of guilt and guilt sometimes aren't even connected. And we'll talk about that in a minute, too. What I want to show you is two cases where someone actually committed a sin. They committed something that was inactive. They should feel guilty over. So in a state of guilt, they actually did something wrong. Both of these individuals were highly motivated by feelings of guilt, and they ended up with two different consequences. Let's go to Matthew 26. Matthew 26.

In Matthew 26, we have the story of Peter. What he does is horrible. What he does is an act of betrayal. To betray somebody is a terrible thing to do. And who he betrays is what's really important here. Verse 69. So this is Matthew 26, verse 69. They have just taken Jesus, and he has been taken in captive by these Jewish soldiers, and he is now going through the ordeal of being beaten up and scourged and all the things he would go through that night before the next day on Passover. They would actually crucify him. Now Peter sat outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl came to him saying, You were with Jesus of Galilee.

But he denied it before them all, saying, I do not know what you're saying. And when he had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there with him, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth.

But again he denied with an oath, I do not know this man. He swears, I do not know this man. A little later those who stood by came up and said to Peter, Surely you were also one of them, for your speech betrays you.

He had a Galilean accent, which was different than some of the other Jewish accents. Of course you're with him. You're a Galilean. We can tell by your accent. Then he began to curse and swear. So he's now using God's name in vain, saying, I do not know the man. Now Jesus had told him, You are going to deny me three times. And Peter said, No, I won't. I won't do that. I will never deny you. That's horrible. That betrayal of your friend, of your rabbi, and the one that you knew was the Messiah. I mean, you're going to betray the Messiah?

Of course I would never do that. Immediately a rooster crowed for 75. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus who had said to him, Before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. So he went out and wept bitterly. He wept bitterly. Now, what do you think about this for a minute? Was he guilty? Yes. Had he done a terrible thing?

Yes. Should he feel guilty? Yes, he should. If he doesn't feel guilty, then he's going to become inherently evil. He goes out and he weeps. Now, what's very interesting is if you read the rest of Matthew and you read the book of Acts, what you find is a man who went out and wept. And the guilt was so overwhelming. He turned to God and said, You please forgive me because I can't escape from this guilt.

I am guilty. I can't change it. I go back and change it if I could and I can't. I am guilty. I accept my guilt and I feel horrible. I don't know what to do. And what you see is a man who is forgiven. You see him change. And you see God do a great work through Peter.

There is a power to forgiveness. Forgiveness from God changes who we are, but you have to accept the forgiveness for the change to take place. The man I worked with would not. I hope he did later in his life. I hope someone reached him and he turned to God or he probably died. He literally died from his own emotions. Let's read on here in chapter 27. When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people, so that Jesus has gone through all these beatings and all these things and morning comes.

When morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put him to death. Then I said, okay, well, let's drag him before Pilate here and he's all beat up and scourged and let's make sure they kill him now. They don't feel some kind of sympathy and let him go because he's been just destroyed as a human being.

We've got to have his death. And when they had bound him, they led him away and delivered him to punch his pilot, the governor. Then Judas is betrayer, seeing that he had been condemned.

It seems like he didn't think he was going to be condemned. I mean, the implication here is, I didn't know they were going to do this to him.

He now feels I've betrayed him. Similar, isn't it, to Peter? I betrayed him. Did he betray him? Yes. Is he guilty? Yes. He now feels guilt. What does he do with the feelings of guilt?

He didn't know what to do with the feelings of guilt. He was remorseful and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. I have sinned. I am guilty. I understand. I have committed an act and I am guilty. He's not making excuses. Peter didn't make excuses either. I accept my guilt. I feel guilty. Take the money back. He's already been condemned. He can't do anything about it except give the money back. And they said, what is that to us? You see to it. Hey, you're the one who betrayed him. Your sin is on you. And he threw down the pieces of silver and the temple departed and went and hanged himself. Here's a man who killed himself because he could not deal with the feelings of guilt. He was guilty. Peter was guilty. One man, his emotions of guilt drove him to do something, one thing, and the other man, his emotions of guilt drove him to self-destruction. So, we're going to talk about guilt. We have to talk about the emotions of guilt. And that's what this time of year is all about. It's about guilt and the emotions of guilt. And what that means to us as Christians. Now, when we talk about feeling guilty, feelings of guilt can come from a lot of different areas. I mean, the most obvious is you've broken a law. You've done something wrong. You've broken a spiritual or even legal precept. And you've broken something, you've done something wrong, or you didn't do something you should have done. Oh, I knew I should have helped that person, and I didn't. And so you feel guilty. That's a legitimate guilt. There's also norms of society. Now, that's an interesting guilt because all societies have to have some guilt built in to make people obey the rules. So societal norms can be good things, and societal norms could be bad things. And as a Christian, we're trying to figure out all the time. But we can feel guilty because society tells us to feel guilty, and sometimes we actually haven't done anything wrong. We also can be made guilty or feel guilty because of educational religious leaders. And some of that can be right and some of it can be wrong. I can remember in second grade, and this is a vivid memory to me, because I couldn't tie my shoes and all the other kids could. And the teacher sat down and was going to teach me how to tie my shoes. And I tried and tried. There was something in the dexterity of it I could not do yet. And I kept trying to tie my shoes and I couldn't do it. And finally she looked at me and said, you're hopeless. You'll never tie your shoes. And I felt so guilty. Like, I'm not like other people. I'm stupid. I'm dumb. What's wrong with me? I can't tie my shoes. Well, you know, within a few months later, I'd figured out how to tie my shoes. I'd practiced at it and figured out how to tie my shoes. I showed her, right? Actually, that was a healthy viewpoint. Not, well, give up because she's right. I'm stupid and nothing. I showed her. But you see what I mean? I felt this enormous guilt. You've all felt guilty because someone said that. You're stupid. Oh, yes, I am. I feel guilty. You know, if you're not very smart, don't feel guilty over it. It's the way you're made. Or get smarter or whatever. But to feel guilt because someone else told you you're stupid is unhealthy.

And it actually is going to have to do a little bit. All these unhealthy feelings of guilt partly have to do also with the Passover and a certain power we get from God. Also, our families can make us feel guilty. Our families can make us feel guilty. I remember, I know I've told this story too before, but when Kelly was little, we had a party at our house and all the little kids were there in the church.

Someone got up in the candy. They'd been told not to get up in the cupboard and get the candy. And someone got up there and got in the candy. And Kim knew who was. I said, okay, we're going to give them a chance to confess here. So I brought all the kids in and said, look, we told you not to get in that cupboard and get any candy. And somebody did. Now, we're not going to punish you if you tell us, if you confess. So all you have to do is confess. Who did it? Well, nobody was going to confess. Nobody was going to confess. And so I said, well, Kelly, come with me. So we went into the bedroom. And because she was really distraught, I said, what's wrong? She said, well, maybe I did it. And I forgot. Because dad had made an accusation, she felt so guilty. She now thought she did it. Maybe I did. I said, we know you didn't do it. Mom saw the person who did it. Oh, she felt so relieved. I said, but you want to make that person feel guilty. I didn't ask her. I said, I do not say, here's what I'm going to do. Just stand here a minute. And I took off my belt and hit the bed a couple of times. Wap! Wap! I put the belt back on. I said, now go out and look really sad. So she went out with her head hugged down, out really sad. I said, at least you're going to feel guilty for what you did. I never brought it to the kid's attention. Never told these parents. But boy, I could tell. You could tell this kid felt bad. Okay. Yeah, she just took a beating for you, son. You know.

That's good guilt. Because feelings of guilt should drive you to confess. It should drive you to do something about what you've done. You see what I mean? It didn't work. He never confessed. So in this case, it didn't work. Kids probably tell the story some day about some minister went in and beat his kid and he feels bad about it. You know, actually she didn't. You know, she was giggling while I did it. She understood what was going on. So the system of thought and the system that we develop emotionally is called conscience. And this is where guilty feelings come from. And some of those can be based on reality. And some of them can be based on something somebody else tells you. Something that can be based on what we make up. We all struggle with even God's concepts of right and wrong. Whether we should feel guilty about that or not feel guilty about that. Sometimes we don't want what God says. So we try to make ourselves not feel guilty. The problem is, if God is pulling us to Him, we are going to feel guilty when we've done something wrong. What's hard for us to figure out sometimes is when we should feel guilty and when we shouldn't. And that's why we're going to talk about conscience. But first of all, before we get to conscience, I'm going to talk about three kinds of emotional guilt. In other words, three ways in which we deal with the emotion of guilt. The first one is the most frightening one, and it is shamelessness. These people are criminals. They're con men. These people hurt people. They lie, cheat, steal, and it doesn't bother them a bit. They're conscience. They're just shameless. So they don't feel guilt. When a human being does not feel guilt, it is very, very difficult for them to turn to God. Because they don't accept that they've done something wrong. So there are no feelings of guilt that they have. A second is that we can feel guilty because of our families, our outside influences, just something that happened to us as kids. And sometimes they don't have anything to do with reality. These are all types of things I've dealt with so many times over the years. The person who stayed on the farm to work because dad wanted him to, instead of going and getting a college education. And it's 20 years later, and dad's dead, and he's taking care of this farm, and he just feels guilty because this isn't what I wanted to do. And I wish he wouldn't have asked me to do it. And there's this guilt feeling because of that. People can feel guilty because they didn't marry the right person. Oh, I'm in love with them, but everybody else wanted me to marry this person. So I feel bad because I married the person that I love and I'm happy with. But mom and dad wanted me to marry this person. All my friends wanted me to marry this other person. Sometimes people will marry somebody because they feel guilty. Which is a bad reason to marry anybody. It's because you feel guilty.

Advertisers know this. I mean, an actor, an actor that you don't know in a white smock can convince you that this kind of toothpaste is so good for you. You should feel guilty if you don't use it. Guilt's a strong motivation. Advertisers use it all the time. Feel guilty, and they'll go get your product. So make them feel like if you don't do this, it's your fault. When your teeth fall out, it's your fault. Because your toothpaste isn't as good as this toothpaste because four out of five doctors. Of course, we only interviewed six.

But one guy wouldn't pay any attention. So four out of the five out of the six said, yes, this is the best toothpaste. So there you go. And if you don't do it, well, you won't even listen to the doctors. Guilt is built into advertising.

Here's interesting what teenagers will do. Peer pressure. My friends want me to do something wrong. No, they want me to sneak out with them, and somebody's got some booze, and we're going to go drink it. And I feel guilty if I don't do it because I'm betraying my friends. But I feel guilty if I do do it because I'm doing something wrong. And so I feel guilty no matter which way I go. Teenagers do that all the time. And it's because they haven't developed a value system yet to know that one thing has more value than the other. So they still don't know where to go. So they're guilt. That's why sometimes it's like, oh, I'm going to feel guilty no matter what, so I might as well go have fun with my friends. That's no way to make decisions. But it's what people do, especially when they're developing their value system. And their value system isn't fully developed. So feelings of guilt can actually be good or bad from social norms, from families, and so forth. But it's the third kind of guilt that's real guilt that I really want to talk about because this is what God wants us dealing with at this time of year. And that is when we actually break one of God's laws or one of His instructions. You know, we may not be breaking one of the 10 commandments, but according to what James says, if we show great prejudice towards people, we're sinning. If we don't visit the widows, we're sinning. So we're breaking an instruction from God.

These are the things that should lead us to guilt. So what do we do when we say, I am guilty? Now, how do we approach God? I am guilty. You go to court and the judge says, is your client guilty or not guilty? You can't say, oh, I'm guilty. But boy, when you hear my story, you'll know why you got to let me go.

Well, actually, in a journalism class, I had to go to a traffic court in Los Angeles to write up a story. And it was interesting. You had guilty, not guilty, and guilty with explanation. And almost everybody was guilty with explanation. Well, you have to understand, judge, I was late for work. And that's why I ran the red light at 89 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone. So if you understood I was late for work and I can't lose my job, you let me off. And it was just fascinating to hear all the guilty with explanations that came up. But when we go before God, there is no guilty with explanation. Either you're guilty or not guilty by the simple instructions or the simple laws.

And we go before God, and we have to interact with God. In this concept, I am guilty. I am guilty. And I repent. I accept my guilt. And my guilt requires my life.

Because we have a whole lot of sins. We're not going before God with one sin. We have a lot of sins. And God says, that amount of sin, you forfeit your life. You forfeit your life. Any sin starts us when we die because of it. I mean, our physical deaths are because sin entered into our lives at an early age. And so we die. So we have to accept, and this is what we do at repentance, and it's what we do every year at Passover. We remember, yes, before God as judge, I have broken laws. I have done things. I am guilty. I am guilty. I'm in a state of guilt. It's like the thief coming for the judge and saying, yes, I did rob that store. And I can argue I did it because, you know, I was trying to do something good. But it doesn't matter. I pulled the gun and robbed the store, and I committed it. I did it. And there's a penalty for that. But we come before God with all these penalties. First John 1. This gets read usually sometime around this time of year. First John 1, which tells us something very important here. There's a couple of things we must do not only when we repent and are baptized, but we must do regularly in our lives. And Passover brings us back to, think about this, First John 1. Let's go to verse 5.

John says, This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So he's drawing the difference here. Dark and light. Light means to practice the truth. It doesn't mean to know the truth. It means you have to live it. And darkness means to live against the light. It's to live against God's way. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And, by the way, this is a very important comment here. The closer we are to God, the more we'll want to have fellowship with others that are close to God. We actually want to fellowship because he says, if we are in the light, we will fellowship with others in the light. He didn't say, well, yeah, you'll want to walk it together. There'll be a need to fellowship. And here he says, why? And the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. We understand the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that his blood is shed for us, so that we now are justified. We're allowed to come to before God. And we know that has to do with forgiveness. Now God forgives me. But understand what he says here. You are washed. You know, if you've been working out in the field all day and you're covered with mud, you know, your hair is matted down. You're just filthy. And you go in and take a shower when you walk out of the shower. You are cleansed. When we accept the blood of Jesus Christ for our penalty, we are cleansed. In other words, this is real important, we are no longer guilty.

When we accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, it's not like God says, oh, yeah, I'll forgive you. But boy, every day I'm looking at your list of sins and thinking, this kid can't make it. That's not what happens. What happens is you are no longer guilty. Understand that. Oh, yeah. But I remember a sin I committed 20 years ago. And understand, God says it's not on the books anymore. Don't come before me as judge on that anymore, because it's no longer there. I have cleansed you of that sin. This time of the year is to remind us, yes, we are guilty and yes, no, we're not.

We are not guilty as long as we stay in this relationship with God, where the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from it. If I am cleansed of mud, I no longer have the mud on me. If I am cleansed of sin, it means it's not there anymore. It's not on your criminal record. You do not have a criminal record with God, even though we were criminals. And even though every once in a while now we still commit crimes, don't we? Is that what it means to break the law of God? You're a criminal. You break the law. You're a criminal. Even though we are still a criminal from time to time, we go to God and we are cleansed, which means that. He says, okay, this penalty is applied for you. I have erased it. You have no criminal record before God. That's what we don't understand. The criminal record is gone.

It's erased because of what we experience here. Now, if you don't accept...here's what's scary when we won't accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And I met lots of people over the years who can't give up some sin they committed in the past. It's almost like, I can't forgive myself. Well, but God did. Understand you're no longer that criminal. Oh, yes, I am. No, it's like the man...God won't forgive me for this. That's why I'm dying. For the power of forgiveness to come into our lives, we have to accept, I've actually been forgiven. I am no longer...there's no record of this anymore in the mind of God. Now, we still suffer the temporary penalties of sins. I mean, you go out and get drunk and drive a car into a tree at 100 miles an hour, and you may lose your arms. You get arms again when you get to spiritual body, okay? It gets fixed. Right now, you suffer the temporary penalties. But in your relationship with God, you're not a criminal anymore.

And we don't get this power because we won't let God forgive us. We won't accept it. And we hang on to guilty feelings of something that God says, you're no longer guilty.

What we're doing, and I didn't...I really understood it when I sat down with this man the second time because the minister I talked to that had been a minister for 30 years or 40 years, he's been dead for a long time, but at that time, 30 years ago, said, Gary, if he doesn't accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, you have to walk away. Without that, you can do nothing. It's true. He doesn't accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I can do nothing. I can't help him at all.

So we understand. We have to understand what it means to be forgiven. You know who understood this? David. Psalm 32. Psalm 32. A lot of times this time of year, I'm giving a message about how to examine yourself and, you know, get rid of your sins, which is part of what this is all about. It's what the days of Unleavened Bread are about. But at the same time, if we don't accept this forgiveness, we're trapped. We're trapped in our own feelings of guilt.

Psalm 32, verse 1. Blessed, blessed. I mean, this person is special. This person receives an enormous gift. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven and his sin is covered. In other words, he's gone. He's erased. He's no longer on the books. You're no longer a criminal before the Almighty God. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit. David says, when I kept silent, my bones grew old. Through my groaning all the day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into the drought of summer, and I acknowledged my sin to you. This is part of what we have to do. We have to confess it to God. I acknowledged my sin to you and my iniquity I am not hidden. And I said, I confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. You forgave me. Psalm 32 is this remarkable psalm of joy, of happiness, of power. And where did he get it from? I was guilty, and I'm no longer guilty. I'm still messed up, and I still fail, and I have to keep going back. But that's the whole point of justified. I can keep going back. I can keep going back because I keep acknowledging my guilt, and I confess my guilt, and God says I forgive you. Move on. And now I can give up my feelings of being guilty.

We can't hold on to our guilt if we've been forgiven, because now we're actually saying God's forgiveness isn't enough for me. Okay, God, you've forgiven me, but you need to punish me too. The only way I get rid of my guilt, my feelings of guilt is, okay, you forgave me, now punish me too. That's a terrible place to be.

Or, okay, God, I know you've forgiven me, but I'm going to be miserable the rest of my life because of my sins. I just keep thinking of them all the time. I just live in the past. And God says, well, woman, I forgave you. So the problem isn't between you and God. Understand, if you've truly repented and you were baptized, you receive God's Spirit, and every year you take that Passover and you remember your guilt that's happened over the last year and you ask for God's forgiveness, and every day you ask for God's forgiveness, every day you're being washed, and then you say to God, I can't give up these feelings of guilt, you're telling God he has a problem.

They say, oh, I feel guilty. Well, yeah, you've done something wrong. You should feel guilty. But see how dangerous this thing is? Well, I might as well give up now because I can't accept God's forgiveness, so I could constantly feel guilty, so I might as well sin. That is a trap that just goes round and round and round and round. And at some point to receive the power that David did in Psalm 32, we have to believe somehow the mercy of God forgave me. Somehow he did that.

And because of that, I just want to follow him. We get this motivation to follow God because we feel and understand we have been forgiven. Because guilt is a terrible thing and it's supposed to be terrible. It's supposed to be terrible. So this brings us to the conscience, our conscience. Because this battle takes place in what we call conscience. Conscience is the part of your mind that has developed your concepts of right and wrong and how you feel about right and wrong. I don't feel guilty because I can't tie my shoes. She should have handled that better, but that's okay. I have no —how do you remember her name? No anger. Okay. I learned. And the guilt went away. So we have to understand that feelings of guilt that aren't connected with God, we have to get rid of those too. We feel guilty because we said something terrible to someone and then they died and we never got to say we're sorry. That's a terrible thing to feel. We all felt that. Oh, I wish I would have patched that up. That's where you have to go to God and say, help me be able to patch this up with that person in the future. You have to believe in the future. You believe in the future? Give me that opportunity. And so we have to even give up those feelings of guilt, even though we recognize I'm guilty, but God's forgiven me and God will give me a chance to fix this. God will give me a chance to take care of this somehow. But it has to be fixed in us first. It has to be fixed in us first. So what kind of consciences are there? We're going to look at three kinds of conscience. One is the natural uneducated conscience. And this is a mixture of good and evil. This is the way most people are, Romans 2. Most people are just sort of a mixture of good and evil.

Romans 2.

And verse 12.

He's talking about people who sinned. In other words, they broke the law of God, but they didn't know about the law of God. He says, for as many have sinned without the law, we'll also perish without the law. Okay, so you didn't know that you sinned and it's going to produce death. Guess what? You still die, because the law is still there. The law is natural.

He says, and as many have sinned in the law will be judged by the law. For not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified. For when Gentiles are people that are non-Jews who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these although not having law are law to themselves. He says, so what if you have a society over here where people say, you know what? You shouldn't lie, you shouldn't steal, you shouldn't kill, and they don't know anything about God. They reap the benefits of not lying, not stealing, not killing. They reap benefits of that, because they're grieving the law even though they don't know it, or they don't know it came from God. He says, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, that between themselves their thoughts accusing or excusing them. So what he's saying, so everybody's just sort of this mixture. There are people who know the law, and they keep part of it and not part of it, and there's people who don't know the law, and they're excusing and accepting and doing these different things. That's what the average person is. The average person is trying to muddle through this, and they have feelings of guilt that come from all over the place. And sometimes they feel guilty because they broke God's law and don't even know it. And sometimes they feel good because they did something and don't know, well, they just kept one of God's laws, and they got a benefit from it. This is the way the average person is. Now, there's a second kind of conscience. So this is sort of the average person struggling, not knowing, knowing bits and pieces of it, and they're all a mixture of good and evil. 1 Timothy 4. 1 Timothy 4. Here Paul talks about a different kind of conscience. 1 Timothy 4. First one says, Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. Speaking lies in hypocrisy. So here's actually talking about the church. Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. In other words, here's people that can't even…they know some of what's right and wrong. They keep rejecting the right so that wrong becomes good to them. They begin to reverse right and wrong. They begin to reverse the ideas of right and wrong. And so they feel good about doing wrong, and they feel bad about doing good. And that is more and more the way our society is going. They've reversed right and wrong. They reversed good and evil. And what's interesting is then, you can feel good about doing the evil, and you can feel guilty about doing the right. When you get into the seared conscience, you can actually feel guilt, but you feel guilty for what's doing what's good. And that's become very, very common in our society today. Then we have another conscience, the definition of conscience, and this is very important. Remember, we already read that we are cleansed. Okay? So our guilt is actually removed from us through the blood of Jesus Christ.

The third kind of conscience is a conscience that it has been cleansed by God. We're not just forgiven by God, but through this forgiveness we experience cleansing. We experience cleansing. We give up the past. Our sins of the past are no longer meaningful to God. We're no longer criminals. We have broken God's laws. We're simply people who are now trying through the cleansing of our conscience to be obedient to God. Hebrews 5. There are a couple of places here in Hebrews that explains this. Hebrews 5 verse 13. Hebrews 5 verse 13. He says, For every one who partakes only of Melchizedan skilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. By reason of use, through their own senses and through their reasoning and through God's Spirit working with them, they're starting to tell the difference between good and evil. In other words, they have a right conscience. This is the system. Remember, your conscience is both your emotional and reasoning systems that determine, this is what I feel guilty about and this is what I don't feel guilty about.

If our conscience is cleaned by God, we should not feel guilty about things that really have nothing to do with guilt.

I've seen people feel guilty about some physical limitation because they can't do what other people would do or whatever. That has nothing to do with guilt. That has to do with just your physical situation. All of us have physical things that keep us from being like somebody else. But people can actually feel guilty about that. Like something's wrong with me. I was born this way because God cursed me. I was born this way because God must not love me. So they feel guilt.

When we begin to have our conscience cleaned, not only does that begin to help us understand and receive absolute forgiveness from God, it begins to help us be able to sort through, there's lots of things I shouldn't feel guilty over. Maybe that was somebody else's problem. That's not my problem. Because we hold these guilts that have nothing to do with real guilt, and then we miss sometimes what we should be guilty over. Look at Hebrews 9.

Hebrews 9.14. Well, let's start in verse 11. Hebrews 9 verse 11. But Christ came as high priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is not of this creation. So He is now the high priest in heaven and the heavenly tabernacle interceding for us. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled the unclean and sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, so what He's saying here is that, you know, for the ancient Israelites to come before God, they had to have rituals, and they were just coming before God in a fleshly human being way.

What God is now doing through Christ as high priest, and that Passover sacrifice is part of what He's doing, is that we're coming before God in the spiritual sense as children of God, and in a real relationship with God on a spiritual level.

He says, so if these things sanctify for the purifying of the flesh, verse 14, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God the Passover? Now, notice what He says here. He doesn't say, just forgive your sins. Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. It's a question. If we understand this cleansing that's taken place through this forgiveness, through the sacrifice and His blood being shed for us, and it actually washes us, if we understand that our conscience should be cleansed, we should not be racked with guilty feelings all the time about what we've done in the past. Instead, we should be motivated, like Psalm 32 was, to glorify and obey God. If God will forgive me, boy, I'm going to give Him everything I have, that's the approach we're supposed to have. I'm free to give Him everything I have. And if I fall down, guess what?

I get to be cleansed again. I get picked back up, and I'm cleansed, and I'm free to give Him everything I have. We carry around our past sins like a big bag of rocks, and then wonder why we're emotionally and spiritually exhausted all the time. When God says, hey, why are you carrying those four? I already took those. Why did you pick them back up? Why did you pick them back up? This time of year is to remind us of this freedom that's happened.

They come out of ancient Egypt, the ancient Israelites, and they're what? Free. Free. Spiritual, because physical Egypt is behind them. What do we celebrate on that day? Oh, the first day of un-un-bred and the last day of un-bred, we're celebrating coming out of spiritual Egypt, and we're free. But you know, many times we're not. We're just carrying Egypt with us, just like they did. They carried physical Egypt with them, and we're carrying spiritual Egypt with us. And God's saying, oh, no, no, no, no, no. The Red Sea closed behind you. Baptism closed behind you. Egypt's gone. It doesn't mean anything. Oh, no. We've got to take a piece of Egypt with us. And we're carrying our sins when they don't even exist in the mind of God anymore. And then we wonder why we're not free. We wonder why we're constantly wracked with depression and with guilt all the time. Because this is a major problem with people, every place I've ever been. Every once in a while something will happen, and in my mind it will pop maybe something I did in the past, and I'll feel guilt again. And I have to tell them, I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's been forgiven. What you did 40 years ago, 45 years ago, has been forgiven. You know, what I did three days ago, when I really said something to somebody I shouldn't have said in anger, it's been forgiven if I go repent of it. God says, okay, you're cleansed. Have a clean conscience. Just let's not do it again. Let's really try not to do this again. But your conscience is clean. We don't have clean consciences. And it's because we really haven't accepted, sometimes, His forgiveness. We just don't accept it. Christ's sacrifice isn't big enough for me.

Every year at this time, in a sermon, I read a little bit of Romans 8. Here is what having a cleansed conscience does. Actually, if you have a cleansed conscience, you want to obey God. If you have a cleansed conscience, God's law becomes really important to you. Because you really want, you understand, He knows what He's doing. And God's not messed up. I'm messed up. I'm the one that's messed up, not Him. And you accept His teachings. You accept His way. The Bible becomes more important to you. If you don't have a cleansed conscience, you will fight God. The more our conscience is cleansed, the more we say, wow, I am free. And now I want to obey Him. I want to do what He says. So we get to Romans 8, verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Understand what He just said. If you have repented and you have been forgiven of your sins, you confessed your sins, you confessed you were a sinner, you confessed that you were all messed up, and you were forgiven, and you were baptized, and you received God's Spirit, and every year you struggle through things, and every year you keep the Passover and you're reminded. Boy, I didn't do so good this year at times, but I am cleansed. My conscience is cleansed. I can walk away from the Passover free of my sins. He says, you're not condemned anymore. That's what He says. You're not a criminal anymore. Paul says, it's gone. Understand there's no condemnation. When you go before God is judged and say, God, I'm here to pay the penalty for the sin I committed last year, and He says, okay, let me look at the book. There's nothing on your book. Oh, yeah, I committed a sin last year. I know I repented. I went through the Passover. I know I haven't done it since, but I just can't let it go. And God says, as judge, I can't condemn you for a crime that's already been wiped off the books. You committed it, but it's not wiped off the books. It's against God's sense of justice, to forgive somebody and then punish it for it. I forgave you. That's justice. Jesus died for you. That's justice. That's a horrible... I paid a horrible penalty to wipe that off your book.

You stand before God and say, you know, the penalty you paid and the penalty your son paid isn't enough for me. But God says, but it's not on the book anymore. There's no need. The penalty's been paid. And it's a pretty dangerous thing like that man who was dying to say, I don't accept your forgiveness. I will not accept it. He says, there's no longer condemnation with those who are in Jesus Christ, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Once again, we're trying not to walk according to the flesh. We stumble, we fall, but we have a different viewpoint because we're free. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. Paul says, I'm free from it. I still sin. He talks about that in chapter seven. I still sin and it frustrates me and I feel guilty. The end part of chapter seven is Paul talking about his feelings of guilt. But then I go back, he says, and I go back to where I'm supposed to be and I go back to God and I repent and God gives me help and I keep overcoming and I keep growing. Man, this guy had been an apostle for 20 years and he's still fighting sin. But he's still going forward. And at the end of his confession in chapter seven, he says, and I'm not condemned. It's not on the books because Christ is living in me. He doesn't say, it's okay that I sin. He says, I've been forgiven and now I'm going to do better. That's why before I baptize somebody, I always have them read Romans six, seven, and eight. He doesn't say, oh, God's forgiven me, I can sin. He says, no, God's forgiven me, I have to really, really struggle to fight sin, but I only do that if he helps me. I can't do it on my own. That's the argument. Not that it's okay to sin, but I can't overcome sin without him. And then I keep going back to, but I keep trying and he keeps working with me and he keeps forgiving me. And therefore I am not condemned. I don't wake up today and say, oh, well, why try God sending me to the lake of fire anyways? I knew people would come to that conclusion.

He says, but the law of the Spirit is making free from this. For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending a old son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned sin in the flesh and the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled for us. That's not what it says. That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. He says, he came because fleshly human beings can't keep the law of God, so they're always guilty and they're always going to be condemned. He came to free us from that condemnation so that with his help we can't overcome sin. And we don't have to be condemned every day of our lives. Every day of our lives we can go and say, fell down today. And I feel guilty. I feel terrible. God says, good. You're feeling real hard today. And God says, but I forgive you. Now go. Go and be free. Now let's work on this. Let's overcome this, and I will give you the power to do so. The more we understand really what God's forgiveness is, we actually have a fear of taking it for granted because the penalty paid is enormous. And it's for you. It's for me.

Each one of us individually gets that sacrifice applied to us. Each one of us gets that.

And Christ says, apply my sacrifice to that person. And the Father says, okay, you are no longer condemned. Now, if that doesn't motivate us to stop sinning, we really don't get it. We really don't. And we have to give up these overwhelming feelings of guilt.

God's love towards us is exhibited through the continual process by which we struggle through sin and overcome sin. And it's a continual process that you do your whole life. That you can go and say, I have sinned again. Oh, I didn't kill anybody today, but you know I hated somebody today. And God says, yeah, that was bad. Like He does. He knows we did it. So what are you going to do about it? I'm sorry. I need to love that person. Yeah, you do. I'm going to help you do that. It'll probably take you years, but I'm going to help you not hate that person anymore. So you're not condemned.

It's not on the books. Because someday you're going to overcome it. It's not on the books.

That's what's so scary about saying, eh, the grace of God gives me a license to sin. That means you're spitting in the face of Jesus Christ's sacrifice. That's a scary thing. But we can't go to the other extreme where we're just guilty all the time. We never experience God's forgiveness because that's the reason it's given to us so that we can be free. We can't experience what it is not to be condemned by God. We can't experience what it is to have the judge who is righteous say, I give you mercy because, well, there's two reasons God gives us mercy. The first one is because it's who He is. And I have a hard time showing anybody mercy. And I haven't done... I mean, nobody's done anything close to me what I've done to God.

It's who He is. And because He loves us. But remember, He will never give up His definition of right and wrong. We excuse being evil because He has forgiven us, and we will end up unforgiving. It is possible to end up unforgiving. So we're brought back what's here to remember, to be reminded, but I want to forgive you. It is God's desire to forgive us so that we can go through this change. But you and I must accept His forgiveness. It is the only way to have the burden of guilt taken off of us, the feeling of guilt, which we should have if we've sinned against God. The only way for that to... Well, what I'm going to do, God, is, you know, I shouldn't have done that. I stole some money at work, you know. They left some cash laying around, and I took it, and I shouldn't have done that. So you tell me what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ahead and give the money to the church. How's that? And instead of paying 10 percent tithes for this year, I'm going to pay 15 percent. Are we even? See, this is what we do. And God says, are you going to feel guilty? Right? There's no healing between us and God when we take those, I'm going to fix this. When we decide I'm going to fix my sin so that God then will be even, we never can feel healed because we're not forgiven. The only way we can feel healed is to be healed. And that means we have to accept the forgiveness. We have to confess, accept the forgiveness. We have to accept the enormity of the price paid for you personally. You have to accept it.

And that motivates us because now our conscience is cleansed. And as our conscience is cleansed, we want to obey. We love His law. We find Psalm 32, bless them because my transgressions have been forgiven. This Passover season, ask God to help you understand His forgiveness. Ask God to help you if you feel guilty because you've sinned to bring you to Him and to confess yourself to and to confess your sins and be forgiven. And then accept it. Accept His forgiveness. And when you do, He's going to give you the freedom, the real freedom, that the days of love and bread are really all about.