Stress. Anxiety. Pressure. It comes in many forms. The cry of a baby at 3:00 in the morning. A huge presentation at work. A sound system that doesn’t want to work when you’re about to have your first services in Doral. The loss of a spouse. The news that your father has alzheimers. The daily arguments with your husband. We live in a very stress-filled world. In fact, experts say that 43% – almost half of all adults – suffer adverse health affects due to stress. One million workers here in the United States are absent on an average work day because of stress related complaints.
So the world looks for ways to diminish stress. Take this pill, do this exercise, read this book and the stress will go away, but for some reason we keep on worrying. Well, today and next Sunday, we are going to talk about God’s simple remedy for stress. And we’re going to see that it’s like that song by Bobby Macfaran that was popular in the early nineties. Do you remember it? “Don’t worry, be happy!” Now you are all probably thinking, “Come on, Pastor. That’s a little simplistic, don’t you think?” But really, God in his Word tells us not to worry and he gives us many reasons why, reasons which we are going to talk about today and next week. And so through the study of God’s Word, my goal is to give you all the most practical advice you’ve ever received on how to deal with stress.
Dr. Rae Baum, PhD, a known stress expert, once wrote: “Stress is your bodies biochemical reaction to how you live your life. Stress can develop into distress and disease through your personal adaptation to internal and external environments.” In other words, stress is our way of reacting to things that happen within us and outside of us. And since we will be talking about this topic for two weeks, I’m going to divide up our series in that way: the stress that comes from within and the stress that comes from without. The stress that comes from without is the stress that comes from problems, deadlines and events around us. And we’ll talk about that next Sunday – how to deal with work-related stress, sickness, loss of a loved one, and many other things. But today we are going to talk about the stress that comes from within.
I. You should feel guilty
I want you to in your minds make a list of the things in your life that stress you out. OK, now, raise your hand all those who had “unresolved guilt” at the top of their list of things that stress them out. OK, well, raise your hand those who even included guilt on their list. We don’t usually think of guilt as one of the main causes of stress in our lives. Work, the kids, marriage, stuff like that is what causes stress, right?
But think about it for a second. Why do the long hours at the office stress you out? It could be just the pressure of the job. Or maybe because deep down you feel that you should be spending more time with your kids or your wife. You feel guilty. You try to be superman at the office and at home. And you get stressed out.
Is it the baby crying at three in the morning that stresses you out, or is it the doubts that maybe you are not being a good parent. Maybe your stress comes from the fact miss your father who just passed away, or maybe you feel guilty for not taking care of him like you should or telling him that you loved him. And now it’s too late.
And you know, there is no more stress in life than trying to cover up for the bad things we do. I don’t want anybody to find out about the lie I told, so I tell more lies...and man is that stressful.
So, maybe guilt should be little higher on our list of things that cause stress. But now the question is what do we do about it. Modern psychology has many solutions: they tell you not to feel guilty because “Deep down you’re a good person.” “Nobody’s perfect.” “ There is no right or wrong, only alternative ways of doing things. Nobody should ever feel guilty.” But we still have that pesky voice in us that tells us that something is wrong, that inner turmoil that won’t leave us alone. The fact that somebody tells me that nobody’s perfect or that deep down I am a special person doesn’t give me lasting peace of mind. Because I don’t always feel so special. In fact when I see some of the things I do, when I see the people that I’ve hurt in my life, I don’t feel very special at all.
But, God does have a solution for guilt. And it’s not by telling me that deep down I am a good person. In fact he makes sure that I know that I’m not. He makes sure that we all feel guilty. He shows us the mirror of his law, the ten commandments, so that we know what we truly are. You know, I can think that I look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise, but when I look at myself in the mirror, I know the truth. When we look in the mirror of God’s law we see ourselves as we really are. We see that we don’t live up to what God demands: to be the perfect parent, to be the perfect spouse, or to love him more than money, a nice house and our new Mercedes.
And God doesn’t say, “Nobody’s perfect, so don’t worry about it.” He tells us: “be perfect as I the Lord your God am perfect.” Then he goes on to tell us that the “wages of sin is death.” We deserve eternal death in hell because we are selfish in our marriages, because we are materialistic, because our priorities are screwed up, because we are liars, because we are gossips. We deserve to go to hell.
And if we stopped at this point, church would be a real stressful place, wouldn’t it? But God doesn’t stop there. Let’s read again what we read in our second reading for this morning... This reading really serves as basis for our message. We read from Romans chapter eight...
II. You shouldn’t feel guilty
The Apostle Paul doesn’t sound very stressed out here, does he? But why didn’t guilt bother him? Before his conversion, he supported those who killed Stephen for being a Christian. He persecuted the Church. He cursed the name of Jesus. He threw Christians into prison.
If anybody should be weighed down by guilt, it’s him right? But he sounds pretty up-beat here. And for good reason. God had resolved Paul’s guilt problem. The just God who demands perfection and must punish sin also is a God of love. In fact he loved Paul so much that he sent his own Son to suffer the punishment of Paul’s sins in his place.
Jesus came as Paul’s substitute. He lived the perfect life that Paul couldn’t live. He died on the cross, suffering the punishment of Paul’s sins. That’s right. Jesus didn’t just suffer the pain of an excruciating death. He suffered much more than the nails pounded through the flesh of his hands. Jesus suffered the punishment of every one of Paul’s sins on the cross. While he was on the cross God punished Jesus with hell, complete separation from God’s love. That is why Jesus cried out on the cross, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
But Jesus didn’t live and die just as Paul’s substitute, but rather as the substitute for all people of all time, including us. And then in the moment before he died Jesus said, “It is finished.” In the original Greek of the New Testament, it’s just one word. It’s the word that in Jesus’ day, the people would stamp on a bill when it was paid in full. That is what Jesus was saying. The debt of your sins has been paid in full. The admission price to heaven has been paid.
Because of that, God justifies us. That’s what it says in Romans chapter eight: “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.” Do you know what the word “to justify” means? It brings to mind a court room. There we are standing before the almighty and holy Judge who is going to bring down his verdict. According to the evidence, we are all guilty of sinning against him and deserve to go to Hell. But then Jesus, the perfect Son of God steps in and says, “I’ll suffer their punishment. Let my perfection count for them.” And so God declares us innocent. That is what it means that God justifies us. He declares us “innocent of all charges.” So if God declares us innocent, who can bring a charge against us? Who can condemn us? If God is for us, who can be against us? The answer: nobody.
And what does this mean in regards to our feelings of unresolved guilt? We don’t need to feel guilty, because the punishment has been paid. Even though we are terrible sinners, we are special to God. In his eyes we are now perfect because of Jesus’ loving sacrifice on the cross. Our sins of materialism, our sins of selfishness, of lying, of not being a perfect parent or a perfect spouse...each and every sin that we have committed has been wiped away, washed clean in Jesus’ blood. So we don’t need to punish ourselves for those sins. We don’t have to try to make up for them or run away from them...because there is no punishment for those who believe in Jesus. God already punished Jesus because he loves you so much. So, just as God forgives you, you should also forgive yourself. If God thinks you are special, you are special, even though you mess up all the time...even though you are a selfish liar. You are a loved child of God. “If he didn’t spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, give us all things.” Including heaven: God’s free gift to all those who believe in him. So, don’t worry, be happy! God has wiped away all the terrible things that we have done and will do. Heaven is ours. So when you feel guilty, when you feel the pressure, the stress of your sins weighing upon you, open up your Bibles to Romans chapter eight or to First John chapter one and remind yourselves that all those sins are washed clean in the blood of Jesus.
And as far as all those other things go: work and the kids, deadlines and illness, death and divorce, God promises to give us the peace of mind and heart that the world cannot give. But we’ll talk more about that next week. So for now, rejoice in the fact that your sins are forgiven. We are terrible sinners. But we have the good news that Jesus died for those sins and that God forgives us, declares us inocent and gives us heaven as a free gift. So, don’t worry, be happy! Amen.
