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Good Guilt, Bad Guilt
Welcome to the third week of Pilgrim’s Problems where we don’t focus on the problems but
we do want to focus on the Bible solutions to the things we might face in life. So today I encourage
all of you, as I have every day or every time I preach this series, this is our third time, to get into a
small group, get your book, get your lesson and really benefit from the book by Karl Haffner
Pilgrim’s Problems. It is an excellent book and you will enjoy it and you will get a lot from it.
Now next week is dedication Sabbath. Now next week we are going to dedicate our parking
lot and thank the Lord it will be done next week. Amen. So some might say well Pastor why do you
dedicate a parking lot? Well the scripture next week is going to be the one taken from the book of
Genesis, Exodus rather where Moses approaches a burning bush and as he gets closer, God speaks to
him and says Moses remove your sandals because the ground on which you’re standing is holy
ground. Any place where God is at all the ground is holy. Everything here belongs to the Lord
including the parking lot so just like we refurbished this building and then we rededicated it. We
refurbished our fellowship hall and rededicated it and now God has given us a miracle of this parking
lot refurbishment we will dedicate that too. We have a great process. It’s going to be a reading that
each and every one of you will be participating in.
Now I want you to invite all your friends and neighbors to this. You know me I am out there
inviting all of the construction workers to come next week. Do you think they will come? Yes they
will. I have invited the contractor. I have invited his dad. His dad is named Gil. He is 82 years old
and Gil told me on Thursday he says Pastor I am bringing my wife to church. Praise the Lord. And
then we have other friends we’re inviting. Chuck of course. We have lots of folks from PRC. And
my two favorite special partners are here today because they can’t be with us next week and that is
Paula and Glen Christenson who we love and who we respect, and you know what folks we couldn’t
do it without them. Give them a little hand will you. We all need partners and they are our friends
and our partners too.
Next week is a fellowship lunch that’s catered by Tamales Guadalajara. Tamales
Guadalajara is a small place just around the corner on Telegraph Road. It is excellent and they are
catering the whole thing, and bringing the food. We’re going to have three kinds of tamales. We’re
going to have the cheese and the green chili. We are going to have strawberry. We are going to have
pineapple and enchiladas, rice and beans, and lots of other stuff so you’re going to have a good time.
So invite friends. We’re going to have lots of food, lots of fun okay. Next week we have a lot to
celebrate.
Now today’s message is called, today’s lesson is called Good Guilt, Bad Guilt. Today is
called Good Guilt and Bad Guilt. Now I really am not going to spend a whole lot of time defining
guilt because I don’t think I need to. Ask your neighbor do you ever suffer from guilt? Go ahead. I
mean every single one of us know the definition of guilt. It’s kind of like when you go to bed at
night something pops into your mind and you go oh I regret doing that. I regret saying that. I wish
that wouldn’t have happened and if it ever happens again I will never do it again you know. Can I
get an amen on that? Amen.
Now there is good guilt and there is bad guilt. Now, of course, the good guilt is something
like this . . . a grandmother, not this grandmother, but grandmother does bake cookies. She says to
the grandkids yes, these are freshly baked cookies. The thing about freshly baked cookies is that it
advertises itself during the baking process so anybody walking around the house starts to smell them.
Grandma says to the grandkids now look it. We’re having these for dinner tonight so don’t touch
them. They’re over here cooling. Oh in about an hour later about half of them are gone. So
grandma assembles all the kids in and says okay who ate the cookies? And all of them of course I
have no idea. To a person I don’t know. They just disappeared. The cookie monster did it. But then
one by one they begin to come to grandma saying I ate some cookies. So good guilt is an emotion
that God gave us to move us forward to do the right thing. Good guilt happens when we say we’re
sorry about how we acted, what we said.
Bad guilt on the other hand is really something that is an irrational feeling that comes from an
unresolved mistake that we have made but that guilt has become a jailor to us and we can’t get out of
jail. It just keeps reminding and reminding and it is a put down. Instead of feeling joyful we are
feeling sad. Instead of feeling liberated we’re in jail and that can happen to Christians too.
So I am talking about regrets today. I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about
good guilt because we need it and we like to see it in our kids, don’t we? We do. We like them to
come and confess to us. It’s a good thing. But it is the bad guilt that we want to talk about today.
We want to kind of spend a little time on that because don’t raise your hand every single person in
here has some regrets about something. I am sitting here making up this message today and during
the whole week I am going through the whole thing about feeling guilty about all the things I should
have done or the things I didn’t do. And I remember one special case that I am not going to tell you
about because I am too ashamed of it. Pastor did you do something wrong? No not really but yeah.
This happened to be in a seminary experience where we’re judging other um you know when you’re
trying to being a pastor you learn preaching is called homiletics. So in the homiletics class all the
students stand up before the other students and they give their message, their sermon. And then each
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one of us grades them, and what happened to me is I got way way way off track and I regretted
getting way off track because it hurt the person’s feelings and I didn’t intend that. It wasn’t my
intend but it happened and I regret it. I know you have some regrets too that you’re thinking about.
There are two points to this sermon. And here is the first one right here. Would you read it
with me? Confess your guilt and receive Christ’s forgiveness. Now that sounds so simple Pastor.
Did it take you all week to make that up? I did not make it up. It’s from the Word of God, isn’t it?
Often times we tend to brush off what we do but we retain what other people do. We tend to sort of
lessen our actions but we heighten others. I really didn’t mean it that way but she did. That’s why
she made me say it that way. Well we can’t blame others, can we? Turn to your neighbor and say
don’t blame other. Go ahead. We can’t do that. We need to own up to it. Isn’t that what we want
our kids to do? Parents don’t you love it when the kids admit when they did it? And you know there
is only one kid there and everything is ruined. Who did this? I don’t know. So I mean avoiding
guilt is in the DNA of all of us. It’s in our children. It’s in us too. We need to help our kids learn
and we need to learn to confess to God.
Whenever I hurt Ginny’s feeling, which is not very often, it’s not only her that I hurt, there is
another I hurt too, and I need to confess to. It’s not only Ginny but it is to my Savior. Remember
Joseph when he was confronted by the woman who said come to bed with me? Come now Joseph
you know this kind of thing. Joseph said no. How can I do that and sin against God? So whenever
we are confronting someone we’re also confronting the Savior at the same time.
So the Bible says this. Would you read this with me? A man who refuses to admit his
mistakes can never be successful. But if he confesses and forsakes them, he gets another chance.
Proverbs 28:13 (TLB) Whoa! That comes from Proverbs 28:13. A man who refuses to admit his
mistakes can never be what? You’re not going to be successful in life. You’re not going to be
happy. You’re not going to be the person you want to be. Being able to do this and confess your
faults to one another, and ask forgiveness from one another and from God helps us move along
confessing and forsaking. This is really important.
Ginny and I saw a movie the other day. It’s called Get Low. Anyone ever see the movie
called Get Low? And Robert Duvall takes the lead role in this movie. It was like 2010. It was last
year I think this film came out. And basically this is based on a true story of a man who lived
basically his entire life apart from society. It was set in the 1930’s in Tennessee. This man built
himself a one room log cabin at the edge of the woods way out of town and basically isolated himself
from everybody his entire life. And after about 40 years of that the man comes back in town. Of
course there is all kinds of rumors about this man. He is a murderer. He is a killer. He is a demon.
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He is a bad guy. Of course all the kids of the town go to his house to try to torment him and see what
is going on, and they find out he does have a rifle and he can use it.
But one day he comes into town and he goes to the church to meet the Pastor and he brings
out of his pocket a ball of money, a big ball of money about a softball size, and he lays it on the pew
and he says Pastor I have come here to talk about something. What is it you want to talk about?
Well I want to talk about get low. He says what are you talking about get low? I mean get low. He
says are you talking about a funeral? Yes I am. The Pastor says when you’re talking about a funeral
and you want to have eternal life you need to have a Savoir. Well I don’t want that. He picks up his
ball of money, sticks it in his pocket, and leaves. So that is an introduction to this man played by
Robert Duvall and that character.
As the story goes on he does want to have a funeral but he wants to have it his way. He
wants to have a funeral while he is still alive, and he wants everybody to come to it, and he wants
people to tell stories about him. You know those stories that you wouldn’t tell to his face but you
heard about them that’s what he wanted to hear. So he hires the funeral parlor to conduct his funeral
and people are asking him well do you want God’s forgiveness? No I don’t want God’s forgiveness.
Are you going to confess anything? Well I am going to make a speech. And come to find out, make
a long story short, this man had actually sort of put himself sort of in jail you might say had actually
felt like he was paying for what he had done when he was younger. That he needed to be in a place
that wasn’t very happy so he put himself in a place where there were no other people. He didn’t want
anybody around him. And for years he never talked to anyone. He had a long scraggily beard, old
clothes, and very disgruntled unhappy man.
Come to find out when it was time for the funeral which he was still alive all the towns
people came because they were curious about him and not only that but for $5.00 you got your name
in a drawing and whoever name was drawn would get his property. Do you think that brought some
people? It was a lottery. So all the people came and there were hundreds of names in the basket to
be drawn out. But after all the festivities so-called bands played, stories were told about him, then he
got up and what he wanted to do was to confess. And so what he did was he took time to tell all the
town folk there who were gathered there some very unhappy unfortunate activities that he did. I am
not going to tell you because you may want to read the book or see the film. But it was criminal in
sense. It was criminal really. And there were reasons for it but when he came to his senses he
realized what he did and he excluded himself from society the rest of his life. Now that’s a true story
and by the time he did go low we pray that he had found the Lord and committed himself to the Lord
see.
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Now that story is the ultimate story of someone who refuses to say I am sorry. Refuses to
face what he did. Doesn’t want to say I am sorry. He knows what he did and he is paying for it.
Well you know what that is not part of God’s plan for us. Amen. That is not. That’s the bad guilt
right there. That is what not to do. This says A man who refuses to admit his mistakes can never be
successful. That is very true in that story. It’s a true story by the way. But if he confesses and
forsakes them, he gets another chance.
Now this is what the Lord says. Would you take out your Bibles now? Would you move the
slides ahead? This is not working for me. Take out your Bible and I want you to turn to 1 John.
This is 1 John chapter 1 verse 9. And 1st, 2nd, 3rd John this will be number one. Not the book of John
but the 1 John. Are you there? 1 John chapter 1, it is not going to be on the screen. It is only going
to be in your Bible there so I want you to look at it. I want you to look at because I want this to be a
memory verse for you too. You can mark your Bible. 1 John 1:9. Just say amen when you get there.
Good. Look at verse 9 everybody and read verse 9 with me. Here we go. If we confess our sins, he
is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. Now look at
verse 10. Read it with me. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his
word has no place in our lives. Do we need to make confession to the Lord? Amen. Every day.
And the thing of it is don’t let the devil pull this one on you, you have nothing to confess today. You
were pretty good. Don’t worry about confessing. Don’t make that part of your daily. You don’t
have to confess. You’re saved by grace. Don’t confess. That’s a big lie. We need to do this every
day. In order to be saved? No, no, no. How are we saved? By the grace of God we are saved,
right? We’re in a saved relationship. You’re not going to get unsaved but because we are in that
relationship we want to acknowledge how much we need our Lord and how much we need his
forgiveness because we love him and he loves us see. It’s not the bad guilt. It’s not we’re whipping
ourselves. It’s the good guilt. Lord, the fact that I cannot even think about one thing to confess to
you means I have become completely obviously to my actions and my words. You see what I mean?
I mean what does your Bible say in verse 10? If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be
a what? liar. So every day in that morning time or in the evening time whenever is your time we
need to go and we need – you don’t have to go and rehearse the whole day. What did I say to her?
What did I say to him? No. But there are times when things do come up and every day we need to
say Lord, forgive me and cleanse my heart. I want to be a better person. I want to be more sensitive
toward others, toward you, toward my wife, toward my friends, toward the people working for me
and with me, toward the guy that cuts in front of me when I’m driving on the freeway and you know
how I feel about that. I am getting better. Although I did have an episode where I did get upset and I
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blew up. I always have to confess my faults to you guys but God will forgive me. I am not proud of
it. So the Bibles says If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will do what? He will do
what now? Verse 9. He will forgive us and he will cleanse us, and purify us from all
unrighteousness. Wow! Every day is a new day. We start every day fresh with Jesus. Man that is
great. And here is the deal about it too is that when we say Lord forgive me then we need to forgive
ourselves. That is going to be my next point coming up here in just a minute. Sometimes forgiving
ourselves is more difficult than forgiving her or him. Do you know what I am talking about? We are
too hard on ourselves. Christ is not that hard on us.
Now there is a prayer that you can pray that will absolutely positively guarantee that God will
answer. There are many many like this but I am going to talk about one. There is one prayer but
there is many that you pray that God will answer guaranteed. 100% God is going to answer this
prayer. Do you want to hear it? Lord, forgive me. God will answer the prayer how often? All the
time. Every time. God will forgive. He wants to forgive. And by the way, when we come to the
Lord with a penitent heart and we feel in our heart and we need to ask God’s forgiveness God
recognizes that. He embraces us. We grow from it because we are sinners. So guilt comes along,
we ask God’s forgiveness and we pray the prayer that he will always answer God forgive me.
Point two. Would you read this with me? Forgive yourself and focus on the future. Now
this is the one we have a little bit of trouble with. How can I ever forgive myself for doing that? In
the preparation for a sermon I read a lot of things and there is a story for example that I read and I
thought I don’t think I’ll share this but I think I will share it. This comes from a book called Dust
and Ashes: A Story of Liberation and it is by Tricia Goyer. She writes in her book, this is just a brief
story because if you ever think you can never be forgiven that is not true. It’s not true. No matter
what has happened to us. We may have to live with our choices but God has forgiven us. Here you
go.
So in 1945 a group of American soldiers liberated a Nazi concentration camp. Can you
imagine this? Going into a concentration camp. We have all seen pictures of it haven’t we? These
poor human beings that are in there they are skeleton like and have been mistreated. Well knowing
that the Americans were coming the SS troops who guarded the camp ran away in the middle of the
night to avoid arrest and more than that. So one of the guards, one of the SS guards, not only ran
away from the prison but this guy took off and abandoned his wife too. He was more concerned
about himself than anything else obviously. Her name was Helena. Helena also left the camp before
the Americans got there. She knew they were coming and didn’t want to be implicated in all that had
happened. She may not have caused it to happen but she was a witness to what happened. So when
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she got out of that camp she lived in the neighborhood because she couldn’t go anywhere else. I
mean there is nowhere else to go. So little by little in time she began to find herself going back to the
camp and back to the camp and looking, and going back to the camp, and pretty soon she began to
volunteer to help the very same people that her husband incarcerated. She helped the best that she
could, passing out food, helping with their health, just the opposite of what happened. And it was
through that process of helping those that she witnessed were inhumanly treated that she herself
found forgiveness and freedom from guilt.
So I am going to tell you today that there is nothing we’ve done that Christ can’t forgive.
Amen. Tell your neighbor Christ can forgive everything. Go ahead. It’s true. Christ can forgive
everything. Here is what the Bible says. Would you read it with me please? Forget the former
things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Isaiah 43:18-19 (NIV) Now friends
the reason I am preaching this sermon is because I know you and I know that some of you are
carrying heavy burdens and I want you to know this scriptures. Look it. Forget the former things.
Did you make a mistake? Yep. Did you make a mistake? Yeah. Yeah you did and it may be that
the results are ongoing. You can’t stop the results from what you did. It’s ongoing. But here is what
you can do and it says it right here . . . do not dwell on the what? the past. It’s over. It’s over. Now
you see the results of it and you have a lot of regrets. I wish that wouldn’t have happened or said that
or did that but with God every day is a new day. Every day is a new day. This is a day when you
can forgive yourself. But see we’re kind of like Get Low. We don’t want to get better. We want to
whip ourselves. We want to isolate ourselves, and live out of town, and punish ourselves by not
talking to anybody. No birthdays, no Christmas, nothing. That is not God’s way. That is not God’s
way. God’s way is renewal. God’s way is forgiveness and the hardest person sometimes is to
forgive ourselves. Can you forgive yourself? I am going to forgive me. Oh Pastor you didn’t do
anything. Yes I did. Thank you for putting me on the pedal stool but may I get down off there. All
of us have done things we regret, haven’t we? Every single one of us here. But today is a day of
renewal and when we’re asking God to forgive us do you remember? Sure you remember. I
remember. You can remember day and time, chapter and verse. You can even rehearse the dialog or
whatever it was that happened or the activity. That is there. The God in this verse here is telling us
just allow yourself to forget that. Don’t dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing. Don’t you
want God to do a new thing in your life? I do. I want a new thing.
Here is a really great verse. Would you read this? Create in me a pure heart, O God, and
renew a steadfast spirit within me. Psalm 51:10 (NIV) In college days the choir would sing just this
chorus at the end of our worship time. This thing is indelibly stamped in my mind. Create in me a
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pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. This is a prayer for all of us. And you
know what the answer to this prayer is? God says I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you.
I have one more thing I want to share with you. This comes from Christianity Today. This
comes from a book called Dug Deep Down by Joshua Harris. This is Christianity Today, April 8,
2011. It’s from a book so this is an expert. And this man is talking about things he has learned and
why he believes them now today. And it kind of goes along with our lesson actually because he talks
about this that he had experienced the weight of guilt that felt like it was going to press him into the
ground. His guilt was so great, so toxic it felt like he was losing his breath. He wanted to go to sleep
not to rest but just to escape it for a while.
Now what he did when he was young he was very ashamed of. He grew up in a Christian
home as a Christian person 13 years old though watched his first pornographic film. Pornography is
everywhere now. Pornography is on the Internet. It’s in advertisements. It’s everywhere. Films
things like that. It’s one of the great curses of our society and a lot of young people and a lot of
people get involved in this. It’s very addicting. And at 13 this young man was involved. He
watched his first pornographic film. He asked forgiveness. He felt renewed. Over time forgot about
the past. He grew up in the Lord and six years later now when he is 19 he goes to San Juan, Puerto
Rico on a great adventure to serve with all the people helping in the Billy Graham crusade in that
country. It was huge and he was very honored.
Well one night he was staying at a house, it was the Pastor’s house, these young people
coming had to stay somewhere, he was there at the Pastor’s house, and the Pastor is gone to a
meeting, he was there by himself so he decided just to sit on the couch and watch T.V. So he started
flipping the channels, flipping the channels like everybody and he flipped through and he got to a
channel that was kind of fuzzy but you can see that there were characters back there. It was kind of
fuzzy. He flipped around but that’s the one that caught his attention. So he began to flip back and
forth until that channel became crystal clear and he realized he was on the pornography channel.
And then for the rest of the night his mind was focused on what he was watching. Finally he turns
off the television and goes to his room feeling ashamed, feeling like a hypocrite, feeling like he let
himself down, and everybody else. I mean why was he there in the first place? He was there to
support the Billy Graham crusade to bring people to Christ, to help people change their lives, and
here he is engaged in the very thing they are preaching against and we do too.
So for most of the night he stared at the ceiling in his bedroom and finally feel asleep kind of
a fitful sleep. He was sleeping well. He began to dream and he had a dream that he was in a card
catalog room. Remember the library when you would look up a book and you pull out a box of cards
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you know and you pull that drawer out and here is all the index cards, and you can go right through
them. He saw hundreds of these things in his dream. And he began to pull out the drawer and look
at the index cards, and lo and behold every single card was about his life. And they had headings
like Friends I’ve Betrayed that’s one heading. There is another heading as he leafed through that said
Lies I’ve Told. Then he went through more cards and here is another heading Lustful Thoughts. He
was overwhelmed with guilt and shame. Long forgotten unhappy moments were brought to his mind
again looking at all those cards and it became sadly apparent that there were more negative cards,
negative activities, and negative behaviors than positive ones. Oh yeah there were some positive
ones but the negative far out weighed the positive and he thought oh woe is me.
Then in the dream Jesus enters the room. And he watches the Lord as he took each card one
at a time and then where the young man had signed his name admitting to it the Lord took a pen and
with his blood he wrote his name over the young man’s name. He put the card back, took up another
card, wrote the Lord’s name then the Lord wrote his own name, and it went through the process, and
this process, and it went on and on until he shouted Lord don’t do that. I don’t deserve it. And you
know how dreams are before you know it the Lord had signed the last card, put it back and then came
to his side and said to him it is finished. And then he took the young man’s hand and led him outside
the room. And that is exactly what Christ wants to do for us today. Whatever guilt, whatever regrets
we are holding today the Lord wants to reassure us of his love, reassure us of his blood for you and
me that we can start anew today.
So I am going to have prayer and during the prayer time now is the time for you just to
confess whatever it is you need to confess to the Lord. If it is guilt, then tell the Lord about it. By
the way, are you telling the Lord anything he doesn’t already know? He knows. He knows. But
today’s prayer is giving it to the Lord and then saying Lord today is a new day with me and you. Let
it be a new day. I want it to be a new day. So I want to start with a prayer. I am going to have some
quiet time when you pray and then I will come back and pray. Let’s bow our heads.
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