In "A Christmas Carol", Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, who against his will, takes him back to a time when he was still a young man. Scrooge sees himself proposing to the woman he loved, a woman who later breaks their engagement because she realizes that he has come to love money more than her. As Scrooge watches the scene unfold, we can see the emotions playing out over his face. We can imagine what is going through his mind: What a fool he had been! How his life would have been different if he had married, if his heart hadn’t been hardened by the love of money. Perhaps that young man wouldn’t have become this wretched, bitter old miser.
Well, consider this: How would you like to be visited by the ghost of your past? How would you like to go back and relive your sins, your mistakes, the foolish choices that changed your life? How would you like to be forced to watch helplessly, knowing what the outcome is going to be, unable to do anything to change the result, feeling the sharp pain of regret at not having taken the other path, or at least wondering what would have happened had your choices been different. Well, for most people, there’s really no need for a nighttime visit from one of Charles Dickens’ three spirits. Because we do it ourselves. We replay the past, again and again. We see it projected on the screen of our minds. Don’t you sometimes wish you could go back and talk to yourself at those key moments, talk to that person in the movie of your life, warn them, tell them where the road they’re taking will lead?
We’ve all experienced regret over the past. It takes many forms:
· Regret over marriage. Imagining how much happier your life would have been if you had married someone other that person sitting next to you. Or if you’d never married that person you’re divorced from.
· Regret over divorce. Regret over broken relationships of all kinds.
· Regret over mistakes you made raising your kids.
· Regret over bad career moves, missed business opportunities, poor vocational choices.
· Regret at not following God’s call to the ministry, or His call to become a missionary.
· In general, regret over all kinds of sins and their consequences. [You fill in the blank].
Now, sorrow over sin can by healthy, up to a point. It can help us learn from our mistakes so that we don’t repeat them. This is the "sadder but wiser" phenomenon. It can lead to repentance and forgiveness. But regret is anything but helpful; it’s destructive and debilitating. It allows the sins and mistakes of the past to reach out and poison our present. And if it’s not handled appropriately, it will just lead to more wrong choices and more regret, in a vicious cycle. As Paul writes,
"Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death." -- 2 Corinthians 7:10 (NIV)
For instance, sometimes people respond to regret by trying to undo the consequences of their past choices in ways that are illegitimate. A man decides he’s married the wrong woman, so he divorces his wife and marries someone else, leaving a shattered family behind. Often, he’ll find that the second wife wasn’t the "right one" either, and will continue repeating the cycle. Or a couple have sexual relations outside of marriage and the woman becomes pregnant. They try to undo what they’ve done through an abortion, even though in their hearts they know that what they’ve created together is a baby, and not just a mass of cells. And so the abortion creates more guilt and more regret. The problem is that we can’t undo the past, and we usually just make things worse when we try.
You may recall that the Israelites tried this in the Old Testament, with disastrous results. Let me summarize the story: God freed them from their slavery in Egypt, and brought them to the border of Canaan, a land that God had already promised to give to them, a good land described as "flowing with milk and honey." But before crossing the border, the people send in twelve spies to explore the territory and bring back a report. Unfortunately, the report wasn’t good. Two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, urged them to go in. But the other ten spies urged retreat: "The people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. . . We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are." (Numbers 13:27-28; 31, NIV).
What did the people do? Did they trust God’s promises? Did they obey him and enter the Promised Land? No. They panicked. They rebelled against God and refused to go in. As a result, God pronounced judgment on them. For forty years they would be vagabonds and wanderers in the desert. None of them would enter the Promised Land; only their children would. So what do the people do? Of course, they regret their disobedience. And, here’s the key point -- they try to undo what they had done, but illegitimately. [Numbers 14:39-45] So first they disobeyed God by refusing to enter when He said, "Enter." Then, they regretted their first disobedience, but disobeyed again by trying to go in when God said, "Stay out". Regret becomes destructive when we try to undo our bad choices illegitimately. The result is only more bad choices and more pain and regret.
Regret is also unhealthy when it leads to an attitude of hopelessness. "What difference does it make? I’ve already messed up. I’ve already destroyed God’s plan for my life. No matter how hard I work, I can never have anything more than second best. So why even try?" The result of this attitude can be just giving ourselves over to do anything we want, including sin, with no attempt to obey God. Why follow God, or why keep his commands, when the good life He had planned for us is out of reach, lost forever because of our sin?
Regret can also lead to apathy, paralysis, an unwillingness to seek God’s blessing -- in our marriage, our family, our job, our ministry. Why try to love your husband or wife; why try to seek God’s best for your marriage when you know you’ve already messed that up by marrying the wrong person, or by getting divorced? Why try to honor God with your career, when you’re in the wrong career anyway, when you know you should have obeyed God’s call years ago to be a missionary? "How can God bless me when I can never get back on the path of His will for my life?" Is that how you feel? Do you worry that your sin has hopelessly ruined the "story" of your life? That the story of your life can never come the way God intended?
The good news is that we don’t have to be paralyzed by regret, we don’t have to let it rob us of the joy and hope that God has promised us as our birthright in Christ. Jesus said, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10, NASB). He said, "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete" (John 15:11). Those promises of abundant life and joy are for all the followers of Christ, and not just those who have never made a serious error in judgment or who have never committed a major sin. Those promises are for every one of Christ’s disciples, whatever their background, whatever sins or mistakes their past may contain.
So how do you get past your past? How do you avoid being paralyzed by regret? How do you stop grieving over what’s gone forever, and get on with your life? Here’s a prescription from God’s Word:
First, correct your theology. Many people think that God has one perfect plan for their lives. As long as they stay in that plan by walking in obedience, and seeking His guidance for major decisions, they will enjoy God’s best. But if at any point they "mess up" badly enough, by sinning or by not seeking His guidance, or by making a foolish decision, then they are out of God’s plan, and they can never again enjoy His full blessing on their lives. They are basically on their own. Sound familiar? Or, as a variation of that idea, you may have heard that God has an ideal Plan A for each of us. But if we fail, God isn’t completely thwarted. He is wise and powerful enough to come up with a new replacement plan for our life, Plan B. Plan B isn’t as good as the ideal plan, Plan A, but it’s still better than nothing. And if we blow that plan, God devises another plan, Plan C, which is inferior to Plans A and B, but at least an improvement over just abandoning us to our own devices. And so on.
Here’s my theological summary of what the Bible says about that idea. "Baloney!" That’s not the way it works. God knows us. He knows everything about us, past, present, and future. He isn’t surprised by anything we do. He knows that we’re going to mess up, and He knows when and how. He knows we’re going to sin. God would hardly be all-knowing if His plan for our life required perfect obedience and wisdom on our part. Even I know that wouldn’t work. Listen to me: God’s plan for our lives, His one and only plan for our lives, includes our sins and our mistakes and our wrong turns and our foolish choices. We can’t ruin God’s plan. We can’t thwart the will of God. God is sovereign over all things, and He brings about exactly the results that He intends, in the world and in our lives.
"He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ’What have you done?’" -- Daniel 4:35 (NIV)
"I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please." -- Isaiah 46:9-10 (NIV)
What does all this mean? It means that you are exactly where God wants you, in spite of all the junk in your past. All of your sins and mistakes that you thought were detours, exit ramps from God’s plan for your life were in reality a part of His plan. You are right now, and always have been, precisely in the center of God’s plan for your life. There was never a possibility that it would be otherwise. Let me ask you a question: Do you think that you can derail God’s plan for someone else’s life? Can I ruin God’s purposes for Bill Shiley’s life? Is God so weak and powerless that He can’t do what he wants in someone else’s life because of your sin? No, of course not! Then why do you think that you can thwart God’s purposes for your own life? Is He any less sovereign when it comes to you?
Still skeptical? Then consider this: What was the greatest sin in history? The worst thing that any person or group of peple ever did? How about murdering the Son of God? How about putting to death the most righteous and holy man ever to walk the earth? And yet, as supremely evil and wicked as that act was, the Bible tells us that it did not thwart God’s plan. In fact, it was a part of God’s plan.
"Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer." -- Isaiah 53:10 (NIV)
"This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." -- Acts 2:23 (NIV)
"Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen." -- Acts 4:27-28 (NIV)
What does this all mean? If the greatest sin in history was part of God’s sovereign plan, then your sins are included in that plan too. Your sin has not thwarted God’s plan for your life. Does that mean we’re any less accountable for our sin? Absolutely not. We’re still guilty. We still need to receive God’s forgiveness for sin through faith in Christ. But what it does mean is that even our greatest sins are not powerful enough to derail God’s purposes for our life. As Paul writes:
"His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord." -- Eph. 3:10-11 (NIV)
God’s purposes are eternal, from before time. His purposes for the world are eternal, and His purposes for you and me are eternal. They don’t change. They aren’t altered or voided because of our sins or our bad choices.
Let me give you another example: the apostle Peter, one of the twelve disciples and one of Jesus’ three closest friends. On the day that Jesus was arrested, Peter not only fled and abandoned Christ, His friend and His Lord, he denied that he even knew him! [Matthew 26:69-75] But Peter’s betrayal of Christ, his sin and failure, didn’t ruin God’s plans for him. After Christ rose from the dead, He not only forgave Peter but re-commissioned him as an apostle:
"The third time he said to him, ’Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, ’Do you love me?’ He said, ’Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said, ’Feed my sheep.’" -- John 21:17 (NIV)
Peter went on to become one of the founders and leaders of the early church, and the author of two of the books of the New Testament. And Peter is hardly unique. Moses, the man God called to lead Israel out of Egypt, had murdered a man and had to flee his homeland. David, Israel’s greatest king, had an adulterous liaison with the wife of one of his soldiers, and then had that soldier killed, and yet God restored him to the throne. Saul of Tarsus, who became the apostle Paul, had been a persecutor of Christians, throwing them into jail and having them executed. There’s hardly a main character in the Bible who isn’t guilty of some gross sin. But God still used all of them to accomplish His purposes. So what’s the point? That sin isn’t so bad! No. All of these men suffered consequences for their sins. But even the worst sins do not alter God’s plans for His people. God uses sinners to accomplish His purposes, because that’s all He has to work with.
Consider Charles Colson, the aide to Richard Nixon who was sent to jail for Watergate. As as a result of his experience as a convicted felon, Colson founded Prison Fellowship, now the world’s largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families. Prison Fellowship has more than 50,000 volunteers working in hundreds of prisons in 88 countries around the world. A ministry that has blessed millions of people got started twenty-five years ago because Charles Colson committed a crime. God’s eternal purposes for that man included even the sin that sent him to prison. It was a part of God’s plan from the very beginning.
But the story that matters most to you isn’t Peter’s, or Paul’s, or even Charles Colson’s. It’s yours. And what I want to say to you this morning is that the story of your life has not been ruined, not by your sin or anyone else’s. God’s good plan for your life is not buried under the mistakes of the past. God has a plan for your life, a good plan, a wise plan, a loving plan, a sovereign plan, and that plan is still in effect. You haven’t missed it. He is working out that plan in your life right now, today. Will you believe that? And will you renew your commitment this morning to seeking God, and following Him, and serving Him with your whole heart; free of the past, no longer weighed down by regret?
(For an .rtf file of this and other sermons, see www.journeychurchonline.org/messages.htm)
