Sin Guilt Shame

There is a Christian teaching that has been a foundation of almost all denominations that is disappearing. It's actually disappearing. It has been since a phrase came into Protestantism in the 1950s that didn't have the meaning it means today, but it just kept morphing and morphing. And it was the phrase, God accepts you just the way you are. And what that was meant when Billy Graham and others said that is God accepts you to come to Him and receive forgiveness if you repent, and then you have to change.

But it morphed and morphed and morphed until God accepts you just the way you are, and you can stay the way you are. And that's become the most common belief in Christianity today. That God accepts you just the way you are, so you can just stay the way you are. And basically, there's no obedience involved at all. And because of that, there's very little concept of guilt. And yet when you look through the Scripture, guilt is a major teaching that all people are guilty before God.

It's the word sin. It's the word sin. I remember years ago, we did... I had a focus group look at Beyond Today and analyze our program. People not in the church. Okay? How do they see our program? They said, it's pretty good. Just stop using the word sin, because nobody wants to hear that. Now, these were all Christians, by the way. If we see any kind of program and they use the word sin, we just turn it off. Because we don't want to hear about sin, because it makes us feel guilty.

And God doesn't want us to feel good guilty. He wants us to feel happy. Well, you and I are in a season of the year where we are reminded of our guilt. And that guilt is a primary doctrine of the Scripture. Primary teaching in the Old Testament, primary teaching of Jesus, primary teaching of the early New Testament Church. That there is guilt, and that we must receive forgiveness.

In fact, you cannot receive forgiveness until you agree that you are guilty. And then we have all kinds of other issues involved in that, like the emotions of feeling guilty. There's a simple formula that was mentioned in the sermonette that we talked about this year. But I want to break this down into something a little more complex. I try to cover this material every few years. I realized I hadn't given a sermon on this subject for five years. So I thought, I need to go back to this.

You know, we understand there's a certain doctoral viewpoint, but then there's... Well, okay, we understand the doctrine. We understand the teaching. But how does that apply to us mentally and emotionally? How do we process it? The doctrine is that we all are called by God to repent because we are guilty. We are guilty of crimes against God. That's all sin is, is crime that's crimes against God. We're guilty of crimes against God. And we must become aware of our guilt, and we must accept our guilt, which can be one of the most uncomfortable things and should be.

So we're actually saying you should feel uncomfortable about your guilt and accept that you are guilty, that you're a criminal before God. You know, the good news starts with bad news. This is the hardest thing about the gospel. I mean, why forgive someone unless they need forgiveness? Why pay the horrible price? There's no cheap grace. There's no cheap forgiveness. The horrible price that Jesus Christ did, why does He do that if there's no guilt?

Then, the remedy for that guilt, of course, and which our guilt has deserved punishment. Now see, that idea, we have no deserved punishment before God. God loves us. He just wants to help us overcome our mistakes. No. Before God, there's deserved punishment. And you'll hear more about this as we approach the Passover, and we go through the whole Passover ceremony, what it means. But it is God's desire to forgive.

It is God's desire to actually give us a pardon so that our guilt no longer exists. And that's what the Passover is all about. The Passover is about God erasing guilt by erasing and forgiving the crime. It's not just a matter of, okay, you've committed a crime, now you have to go to jail for 30 years. It is, though, I forgive you of the crime as if it doesn't exist anymore.

I wipe away your crime. Now, when I say that, there are physical consequences of sin you and I can't separate from. Every one of us here is going through some physical consequence of something stupid we've done through our lives. And we're paying that penalty. But those penalties are just temporary. What God says is that the eternal consequence, which means that we are separated from God for eternity and end up in the lake of fire and suffer eternal death, He says that is remedied, that is forgiven, that is gone. And then we have this relationship with God. We're allowed to come before God as children, not God as judge, but God as children coming for a father. Now, simply stated, guilt is a very narrow concept. It gets very complicated. The literal meaning of guilt is the state of having disobeyed a law or moral precept. You go out and you steal according to the laws of the land, including God's law. It says that if you go out and steal, you have committed a crime. You are guilty, and you have to come before a court and be judged. God says that all human beings are guilty. They have broken His laws, literally, also in our minds and our hearts. Therefore, we deserve the punishment. The idea that God says you don't deserve the punishment is not true, or Christ wouldn't have had to be sacrificed. So we deserve the punishment. We are guilty. Our advocate, it's the only court, it's the only attorney that you have, you know, because that's what an advocate is. Jesus Christ called an advocate. You go to court, that's what your attorney's called, your advocate. We have the only advocate that's ever, ever, appeared before the judge and said, oh, my client is guilty of sin. In fact, guilty for sin! And they deserve death. That's what our advocate says, our defense attorney. And in the court of law, God looks at the books and says, yes, you are. And when we plead guilty, then Jesus says, apply my penalty for this person. That's what happened to you, a baptism. Jesus said, apply my penalty for you. That reality happened. And when that happened, you received God's spirit and you become a child of God. Understand the enormity of apply my penalty to that person. Take my death, my beating, my pain, my suffering, and you give it in that person's place. You let me suffer that for that person. The guy says, okay. Your guilt is gone. Now we still deal with it in our heads. We still deal with it in the temporary consequences. But the guilt is forgiven. This is why the Passover is so important. We are celebrating Christ's death for what? So that we can live. Because without that, God says, without any substitute for your penalty, you suffer your penalty. And the penalty for every single one of us. I don't care how good we've been is the lake of fire. Because the amount of crimes we've committed and our corrupted human nature makes us unsalvageable without God's help. We cannot be salvaged without His help. You can't dance fast enough to impress God. You can't do enough good deeds to impress God. Because we already have broken enough that we're sentenced. We already are doomed.

Now, that's the state of guilt. That's why Paul wrote in Romans, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Everybody. So we're all in the same boat. Okay, we're going to keep the Passover. Those who've been baptized will commemorate Christ's sacrifice for you. And then still feel guilty, won't you? Many times. Still feel guilty for something you did last week or last year or 15 years ago. Still feel guilty because we still are plagued by the things that we do. Well, let's look at two cases in the Bible where someone felt guilty and should have felt guilty. By the way, you cannot be forgiven until you repent, and you cannot repent until you feel guilty. There's the problem. You have to become aware and uncomfortable with your state of being in order to receive forgiveness.

But let's look at Matthew 26. I find this very interesting. We have these two cases back to back. Two cases back to back where someone does something wrong, therefore they are guilty, and they both feel guilty, and they have two different reactions to their feelings of guilt.

Matthew 26, verse 69. Now Peter, this is the night that Jesus is being beaten and passed around from person to person, being mocked, punched, beat with sticks, beat with... He just tortured. He went through torture for hour after hour, and Peter is outside hanging around the building there, trying to see what's happening. 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 saying, I do not know what you're saying. And when they had gone out to the gateway, another girl saw him and said to those who were there, this fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. But again, he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And then later those who stood by came up and said to Peter, surely you also are one of them, for your speech betrays you. No, you have a Galilean accent, okay? We know you're from Tennessee and not New York.

Then he began to curse and swear, saying, I do not know that man. He denies Jesus Christ. He lies. He swears.

And it says, immediately a rooster crowed. Jesus had told him, you will deny me three times before the sun comes up, before the rooster crows. Verse 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. Peter was devastated by what? His guilt. He was embarrassed. He was overwhelmed. How could I be this way? Now, the book of Acts tells us how Peter responded to this. Peter repented. Peter followed God. Jesus Christ interacted with him. He received God's Spirit at Pentecost, and he went out to become one of the greatest men of God in all of history. That's the response of a man who committed a terrible crime and repented.

But look how he felt, because that's part of repentance.

Now, chapter 27. And when morning came, all the chief priests and elders of the people plotted against Jesus to put him to death. When they had bowed him, they led him away and delivered him the Pontius Pilate, the governor. Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that he had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? You see to it. Then he threw down the pieces of silver the temple departed, and it went out and hanged himself.

There was no way he could see any way out of his guilt, and he was guilty. So he could not live. He took the penalty upon himself, and he died. I don't know what the... I don't know what his future is. I would even know to guess. God knows. But the bottom line is we see a different response, don't we? We don't see a man who wet bitterly and begged for forgiveness. We see a man who I am guilty, and I'm ashamed, and I shall kill myself. That's my response to my feeling guilty and the shame that I'm experiencing.

Shame is not guilt, but they are connected.

Guilt says, I have done wrong. I am a corrupted person, and there's evil in me. And God can and will forgive me if I repent, and he has the power to change me. We're going to talk about that in a minute, because the Passover and the Days of Love and Bread are connected together. God can and will forgive me, and he can change me. Shame is I can't be changed. I am so nothing I can't be changed. For want is, I'm so nothing only God can change me. Shame is I'm too embarrassed. I have to hide this. I can't run away from it. What do I do? The only way he had out was to kill himself. He could not deal with his own shame, and he could not seek God's forgiveness. I don't know. He would not seek God's forgiveness. He knew it's end, but he did not seek forgiveness. In his shame and his guilt. Peter, in his shame and his guilt, turned to God, and God forgave him. And Peter was forgiven by God. It's recorded for all of us. It's not recorded because God has something—or Jesus has something against Peter. Peter's been forgiven. That issue means nothing to God anymore. It means nothing to Jesus Christ who stands by his right hand. It means nothing. That issue is gone, but it's recorded for us because we understand what he went through, and we understand his response, and we understand what God did. Judas is recorded for our response because we understand what he did, and we understand what happens when you're guilty, and you have no way to be forgiven, and your shame is all you have. When shame is all you have, you become absolutely self-destructive.

I've known lots of people in life, because all they have is shame, and they can't turn to God, and they're always self-destructive. They're alcoholics, drug addicts, you know, just live life with no moral code or compass. They're lost and depressed, and they're filled with shame. There is no hope for me. Even God can't forgive me. Now, let's break this down a little bit. I want to talk about three different kinds of emotional guilt and shame. Three different kinds. One is shamelessness. Now, this is—when you get to be shameless, this is where a person can become pure evil. Nothing really bothers them. You know, there are people who can kill other people for no reason and not feel one bit of remorse. They just don't. They can't. Shamelessness is a very frightening condition, because a shameless person has a hard time turning to God. Now, that doesn't mean God can't work with them, but it's very difficult. It's what the Bible calls reprobate mind. You know, I've had a number of people ask me to go through Romans in the Wednesday night Bible study. So last two weeks ago, we started the book of Romans, and this Wednesday, we'll be going through that passage where Paul talks about a reprobate mind. So we'll go through and show what that means. He's talking about Roman culture, which is eerily similar to the culture you and I live in. And so many ways. And he says they had a reprobate mind. Shamelessness. This people who are mentally ill, you know, there are people that are so evil, it's interesting. In our system of government, there are people so evil that they won't give them the death penalty, because they say they're too insane to be judged. So they stick them in a institution for life. They're too insane to be judged. They're too evil to be judged. The second is that all of us have feelings of guilt and shame that doesn't come from God's standards. Now, not all these other standards are wrong, but we have to understand where they come from. We have feelings of guilt and shame because of family norms, because of schools we went to, because of friends, because of the societies we live in. Right? I mean, I know people who feel guilty or feel not guilty. They feel shamed. When someone comes up, they don't know and hugs them. I know other people from other cultures where you hug strangers. It's just common. They just do. And, you know, then they feel sort of guilty because the other person won't let them hug them. Those are just cultural norms that we learned that we can have shame and guilt over. I mean, families can create all kinds of guilt and shame, right? I've known people who feel guilty all the time because they stayed home to work in the family business when they really wanted to go to college and do something else, and they're unhappy. Or they went and did something else and didn't help the family business, and the family business went under, so they feel guilty. We can feel guilty for all kinds of things. I know people who felt guilty because they didn't marry the person everybody else wanted them to marry. Or they come and talk about a job. They'll have a job that other people can't think of. They have a job that other members of the family think is of a lower standard. So they feel guilty because they have a job they like, but everybody else in their family says, well, that job's beneath you. But I love this job. Now, that's beneath you.

Advertisers do this all the time. When the guy in the white smock with an IQ of 95, he just happens to be a good actor. Not that all actors are 95. I'm just saying sometimes, we give this credence to people. And he says, four out of five dentists recommend this. And this will change your life because you have white teeth. Oh, I feel so guilty. I don't have white teeth. Oh, they do this all the time. If you can just get a little shame in there somehow, or a little guilt, you can sell your product. I used to write commercials for a living.

Kids do this all the time. Teenagers will make somebody feel guilty. Just take four teenage boys and one of them says, let's do this. And the other three say no. And then he says, what's the matter with you? And then the challenge is out. And teenage boys will do the stupidest stuff.

I won't tell you stories. Stupidest stuff because you're challenged. And you're gonna show that you can do it. And sometimes they'll commit crimes. Teenage boys especially. Girls will do stupid things. It's a little different to be accepted by other girls. And if they feel guilty or ashamed. And I remember some kids in high school that other kids shamed them for no other reason. I don't know why. They just shamed them. And those kids were the ones that, you know, were always quiet and sort of alone. Many of them went on to become really successful people. But they were shamed by other people.

So we have feelings of shame and feelings of guilt that aren't biblical. Now that doesn't seem to me they're all wrong, by the way. Okay? If you sit down at a table, someone has you to come over for, you know, invite you over a meal, and you sit there and eat like a pig, yeah, you should feel a little ashamed. Okay? You should have better manners. So there, you know, there are societal norms that are good. I'm not saying all, we have norms in the church, you know. You shouldn't show up to church in their bathing suit. Okay? That's just not proper. So, not all of these are wrong, but we have to recognize sometimes we'll have shame and guilt that has nothing to do with God. And then we have the literal guilt of breaking a commandment or a law. And I'm not talking about in the sense of society. I mean, if you go out and steal, you go out and drive drunk, they arrest you, you're guilty. But I'm talking about God. And when we need to have, we're talking about conscience in a minute, our consciences need to be developed to the point that when we break something that's against God, we should feel guilty. And the only way that guilt should go away is when we repent and accept God's forgiveness. I know people that won't accept God's forgiveness. They just won't accept it. And sometimes they destroy their lives. God can't forgive me. Does that mean your sin is greater than God? Or does it mean you won't accept it? You won't accept God's forgiveness. That God's big enough to forgive. He's big enough to forgive. He doesn't take our sin lightly, or Jesus wouldn't have suffered that much. But it shows what He's willing to do to give us forgiveness if we accept it. If we'll accept it. And what it means when you accept it is, talk about this in a minute, you have to change. He doesn't accept you just the way you are so you can stay the way you are. That's not how this works. First thing God says, hey, I won't take you the way you are. You want to be in a relationship with me, you're going to have to change. That's the beginning of the gospel. But I want to have a relationship with you. That's amazing. I will do what it takes to have a relationship with you. But you can't stay the way you are. And once that phrase entered into Christianity, it changed dramatically. And now, 50, 60 years later, it's created a whole new Christianity that's forming out there. Look at 1 John 1. John's writing to the church here. So he's writing to Christians. He's not writing to the world. Verse 5.

This is the message. This is 1 John 1.5. 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. That's a pretty strong statement, isn't it? We have to be careful. We're not lying in our Christianity because we're not practicing the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from sin. This is how this happens. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. And that's the problem with woke Christianity. That's the new term for it. Woke Christianity. It was secular humanist Christianity. It was called New Age Christianity. Now it's called woke Christianity. And it just keeps growing and growing and growing. It has a lot of New Age stuff in it. A lot of Hinduism, actually. If we say we have no sin, if we say we're not guilty, then we can't have a relationship with God. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And not just forgiveness. This doesn't stop with, God forgave me. And tomorrow I'm going to do the same thing and He'll just forgive me. A lot of sins can take a lot of time to overcome. We spend a lifetime dealing with certain things. But it's never, oh, he forgave me. I'm going to go do it again.

Cleanses us from unrighteousness. There's a change. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. My little children, remember who he's talking to? He's not talking to the pagans of the world out there that in the world they lived in. He's talking to the church. My little children, these things I write to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an advocate. Someone who defends us with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation. He's the substitute for what you and I deserve because we are guilty. Oh, God, I don't deserve that. I mean, oh, sure, but you know, I've done a few things. But I grew up a really good person. You know, I never got drunk. You know, I've been a really good person. I never had sex before marriage. I just a really good person. Surely God didn't think I deserved death. Yeah, because our nature is corrupt. We're capable of anything.

With a corrupted human nature, we're capable of anything. Just put us in the right environment. Put us in the right environment without God's Spirit. With God's Spirit, it changes. But without God's Spirit, we're capable of anything. These things are right to you that you may not sin. Verse 2, and He Himself is a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world. He says this is God's opening the door for the whole world to come through this process. Anybody that wants to come through this process has to go through this process.

And it's a whole lot more than just accepting Jesus.

It is letting Christ live in us through the Holy Spirit. That has to happen. Look at David's example in Psalm 32, because as we go through this process that we commemorate every year on the night that Jesus did it, it's not the same day of the week every year, but it's the same day of the month. Okay? 14th day of the first month of the Hebrew calendar. Psalm 32.

Verse 1. Here's where we have to get to. Here's what you have to accept. You know, we just went through a whole series of sermons on the Beatitudes, how to be blessed, right? Here's the blessings, the blessings from God. Well, here's another blessing. Blessed, David said. Now, David had a lot of problems with his sins, didn't he? Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, and whose spirit there is no deceit. In other words, he doesn't impute iniquity. It doesn't mean it wasn't there. It means he has pardoned it. It's like you have a record. You know, you go in... I've often wondered. It's been a long time since I've been pulled over and gotten a ticket, but someplace... I remember one time in a... in the one o'clock in the morning driving through this wee little town in Texas, and the sheriff pulled me over because I was going five minutes or five miles over. They needed the money. So anyways, he pulled me over and gave me a ticket. I'm sure that's on a record someplace, even though it's 30 years ago. It's probably on a record someplace, right? When he says he does not impute iniquity, your record's gone.

Now, the reality you committed sin still there, temporary consequences still there, but on the record book of God, your sins are gone. There's no... you know, you go... I said, God, remember when I did such and such? And he's like, well, why are you bringing that up? That's no longer in your record book.

See, this is what David understood. When I kept silent, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For your hand was heavy upon me. My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. There were times when he did not acknowledge his sin and seek God's forgiveness, like the rest of us. He liked to pretend to sit and didn't take place. And he said, it's like God reached out and put his hand on my shoulder. And it got heavier and heavier and heavier until he was stooped over and heavier and heavier, too. He's kneeling on the ground and then heavier and heavier until he's worshiping. And in Hebrew, the word worship means your face is touching the ground. So he's still face down on the ground. I mean, I... this is a kind of image. I'm not saying this is what he means, but this is typical Hebrew imagery. Okay, he got down, down, down. His face is down on the ground because God's hands upon him. Because why? God's saying, we have a problem in our relationship, son, because you're guilty and we have to deal with this. And then notice what it says. Verse 5, I acknowledge my sin to you and my iniquity I have not hidden. And I said, I will confess my transgression to the Lord and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. There's this joy you can see in what he's writing here, this freedom that God actually forgave me. Tomorrow, I probably have a whole other set of sins to deal with, but now, because of this relationship with God, I am forgiven. And every day we go back. And every day it's like, okay, don't put your hand on it. Or sometimes when it's just a little heavy, it's like, that's enough. I get it. You don't have to take me down to the ground all the time. But he will if he has to. He'll just keep his hand on you until you're flat out on the ground and say, I get it. I'm sorry. And he'll say, there's easier ways to do this, kids. But he's not going to let us stay in sin.

He's not going to let us stay in sin. That's why once a year we go back and we celebrate and commemorate the death of Jesus Christ.

What this has to do with in the next stage, and we'll cover it here in the last 10 minutes, but, is the idea of your conscience. God begins to change the way we think and feel towards him, towards sin, towards others. In other words, it is a total conversion. In this change, we don't just accept certain behaviors. We just don't even accept certain doctrines. We accept this package of who we must become because our guilt is gone. Because we remember, I don't want to be guilty anymore. I want to be forgiven. I want to be pardoned. I want to be free of all that. And that happens in our conscience. And I'm going to take a complicated subject and make it very simple here for today's purposes, but we'll talk about three different kinds of consciousness. Our conscience, not consciousness, but our conscience. Okay. The internal decision-making process of what's right and wrong. And it's both intellectual, it's mental, and it's emotional. And it becomes spiritual because God's involved. That's why it's so complex. And usually, when we talk about the natural conscience, it's just a mixture of good and evil. Right? People say, well, murder is wrong, but stealing's okay as long as it's the next tribe. A lot of American Indians had that. Murder's wrong, but you can steal from the next tribe. So it's a mixture of good and evil. The natural conscience is just a mixture, except for those who become totally evil. Those ones who are reprobates. They have no conscience at all. None whatsoever. They just do what they want, when they want, how they want, and they end up in jail or someone kills them if you get far enough into that. Or society collapses, and you can literally have a majority of people with no conscience, and that's frightening. That can happen. We may be headed towards that. We have a majority of people without a conscience. The second is a conscience that started to learn good from evil, but kept choosing evil. Look at 1 Timothy 4. 1 Timothy 4.

And this is what the days of the love and bread are all about. We're forgiven. We're told that through the Passover. We partake of the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. But then we have to take the leavening out, and we have to put something else in. And what we have to put in... I'm talking and I'm looking up my... Let's see. 1 Timothy 4. We have to put Christ in us. He doesn't accept us just the way that we are. He accepts us when we say, I don't want to be the way I am. I wish to be your child. I wish to be someone else. And so then Christ lives in us. So we take the leavening out, but we eat unleavened bread the whole week, which is taking in guiltlessness, His guiltlessness. We're learning to be like Him. 1 Timothy 4. 1 and 2.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in the latter times, some will depart from the faith, giving He deceiving spirits and doctors of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron. In other words, there's this second state where we just keep choosing good. We keep choosing to be guilty. We keep choosing the crime and we refuse to repent. And if that goes on long enough, you know what a branding iron does? It takes the hide of the animal and changes it. I mean, it burns into it a mark. And He uses this graphic thing to say, it's like burning into your mind this mark that you will not repent. That's a scary thing.

That we just won't repent. We just accept the way we are. We like the way we are. We know good and evil. Oh yeah, that's right, but I don't want to do that. You do that long enough. And He says, you now have a conscience that won't follow God. But the third kind of conscience is what the days of the love and bread are all about. It's a cleansed conscience. I say, it's actually a conscience that's being cleaned because none of us are totally cleansed yet. Well, we're in the process of what God is doing through that sacrifice, forgiveness, wiping out our sins, taking away the eternal penalty, and then preparing us for our relationship with Him in His family and His kingdom. Quickly, Hebrews 5.

Hebrews 5 and verse 13.

He says, for everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. In other words, there's this process which God exercises us, where we learn to discern good and evil. The NIV translates to verse 14, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. In other words, this is a constant way of life, choosing good and evil, good and evil. And when we choose evil, we choose something that's wrong, and we realize it's wrong, guess what it does? If we have this kind of conscience, we feel guilty. And we go to God and say, that didn't work. I'm sorry about that. And God says, well, don't do it again.

That was a hard way to learn a lesson. It'd be easier just for you to do what I said, but okay, isn't that what we do as parents? That didn't work. I understand. Yeah, this is going to hurt for a while, but you learn from it. It's very important. You learn from it.

This is this conscience now is learning to know what God says is good and what is not good, and choosing the good. Hebrews 9, verse 11. Hebrews 9, verse 11 says, But Christ came as high priest of the good things that come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with his hands, that is not of this creation, and 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. Now he's tying this into the day of atonement in Hebrews, but at all, atonement and Passover are connected together in so many core concepts. Here he's the high priest. At Passover, he's the actual lamb, but then he makes his metaphor here. He's the high priest bringing his own blood. This is the gateway. This is the only way for us to come and have God enter into our lives. But then we must be changed.

He says, verse 13, For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctified for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, do what? Cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. It's a question. How much more should this cleanse our conscience? This changes the way we think. This changes the way we approach God. It changes the way we approach life. It's not just a religion that we do. We can't ever fall into, oh, this is just our religious practices. We go to church on Saturday and we do the Passover once a year.

This is the fact that you have been made guiltless.

You have been forgiven. And there was a price paid for that. And there's an expectation from God that we live up to that. We live up to that price by giving our lives to God so that He cleanses us. You can't cleanse yourself. You have to submit to the cleansing, or you can end up with a seared conscience. But if we submit to the cleansing, it will happen. He changes us. He molds us through His Holy Spirit and Christ living in us. So we repent. We accept God's forgiveness. And we submit to this cleansing of our conscience so that we learn the difference between good and evil. We learn what it is to be Christ-like. And we dedicate our lives to that. And that's a constant process of falling down and getting up, and falling down and getting up, and falling down and getting up. That's what it is. People say, well, why arrive when Christ comes back and you're changed? When will He stop fighting sin? When Christ comes back and you're changed. Then it'll be gone. You won't have any pull for sin anymore. But yeah, as long as you breathe air, you know, you're going to have resentments, anger. A lot of times it's the things that happens in our heart and mind, right? As long as we breathe air. But we discern, nah, it can't be that way. God, please help me not to have resentment anymore. Please help me to forgive that person.

God says, okay, they have to repent of their guilt, but you've just repented of yours. You've just repented of your guilt. So you're not guilty anymore. I help you get out of resentment. So what if that person doesn't repent? I still can't keep resenting them. But what if they don't repent? I tell you what, I'll forgive them when they repent. God says, oh boy, now you're both in trouble. He works on each one of us where we are, what we're going through, our personal lives. Ask God to help you this season, to understand his forgiveness, as we are going to look forward to the price paid for that. God had Christ paid that price to teach us that. This isn't just simple. Oh, God forgives me. He's such a nice God. He's such a nice person. You just forget, no, no, no, no, no. Our guilt is so terrible that is what we deserved. That's what it says. He's a substitute. In the eyes of God, that's what we deserve. That's not what Satan says we deserve. In the eyes of God, that's what we deserved. God says, no, I'll forgive you for that. You're too small. You're too weak. Satan's got a hold of you. I'll pull you out, but I'll pay the penalty for you so you always know how much I hate evil.

God loves us so Christ died for us. He hates evil so Christ died for us.

It's the love of God that drove Christ to die for us. It's the hatred of evil that drove him to die for us. Because you have to have some... the goodness of God requires he will not abide forever with evil. You've heard me say that. I'll say that a thousand times. He will not abide forever with evil. There's a point he says, no more. I will not live with it anymore. And you want to be saved from that? Okay. But this cost me something and it cost you something. It cost God what he went through and what Christ what he went through. It cost you and me giving up the evil that's in us and having it changed. That's the price we pay. I'll tell you what, that's a good price. That's a good deal. What God and Christ went through so that you and I could be forgiven and give up evil. That's a good deal, folks. It's not an easy deal, but it's a good one if we'll accept it. Let's pass over season. Spend some time thinking about meditating upon and asking God to give you the freedom that can only come through his forgiveness.

Okay.